ARDA ORAK
one true leader of United World Federations
Hi, I'm Arda Orak.
I'm a writer, researcher, and multidisciplinary thinker from Istanbul, Turkey. My work explores a wide range of subjects, including philosophy, history, political systems, psychology, religion, languages, and the future of human civilization.
I graduated from Boğaziçi University and am currently preparing to pursue my Master's degree in International Relations and Diplomatic Studies at the Prague University of Economics and Business (VŠE) in Czechia.
Over the years, I have worked on numerous projects ranging from digital content, essays, books, podcasts, and the long-term development of the United World Federations (UWF), a conceptual framework exploring functions of the future human civilization.
This website is my public archive and second-brain. In between these pages, collect ideas, document experiences, and share my writings, projects, and ongoing research.
Here, you'll find essays, travel experiences, philosophical questions, political analysis and experiments in understanding both human nature and human societies.
Take a look around, and welcome to my world.
Seasons
Check out which season of my life I am currently in.
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Polylingual Translator
A personal tool for exploring European languages and their shared roots.
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Featured Essays
A curated selection of thoughts exploring sociology, psychology, and structural systems.
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Search Anything
Everything in one place — essays, travels, films, books, and more.
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UWF Calendar
A 13-month redesign of time — built for a unified world.
Today
This Month's Special Days
Explore the full UWF Calendar →
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Featured Travels
The most recent journeys — geographic and cultural notes from the road.
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My Previous Year
Check out my most recent yaer and see what happened.
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Socials & Network
Click here to reach out to me for social, research, coaching, or collaborative inquiries.
ARDA ORAK
Founder of United World Federations
Born in 2002 in Istanbul, Turkey, I am a Turkish writer, independent researcher, and multidisciplinary thinker whose work explores the intersections of history, philosophy, politics, economics, religion, and human civilisation.
I describe myself as a polymath, or a modern Renaissance man. I have never been comfortable limiting myself to a single discipline or profession. Instead, I tend to follow my curiosity wherever it leads, moving between fields such as history, philosophy, religion, political systems, psychology, governance, esotericism, and symbolism. I enjoy exploring how different ideas connect, even when they come from seemingly unrelated worlds.
Most of my projects begin with curiosity rather than a long-term plan. Sometimes that curiosity leads to months of reading about the history of religions; at other times it becomes a book, an essay, a research project, or even an attempt at filmmaking. Once I feel that I have found the answers I was looking for (or at least enough answers to satisfy my curiosity for the moment) I often move on to a new question, a new subject, or an entirely different creative pursuit. For me, learning and creating have always been less about following a fixed path and more about continuously exploring whatever captures my attention.
In 2026, I published my first book, Modern Dünyanın Köleleri İçin: Politika (Politics for The Slave of the Modern World), an investigation into the historical relationships between power, capital, ideology, and geopolitical transformation. It is the first volume of a planned four-part series covering Politics, Finance, Religion, and the State.
I graduated from Boğaziçi University in July 2026 with a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Administration from the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences. In September 2026, I will begin my Master's degree in International Relations and Diplomatic Studies at the Prague University of Economics and Business (VŠE), continuing my academic interest in international systems, diplomacy, and the long-term development of human societies.
Alongside my writing and research, I am the founder of United World Federations (UWF), an ongoing civilisational project exploring the principles, structures, and symbolic foundations that a future global society might require. As part of this work, I designed the UWF Calendar, a thirteen-month, twenty-eight-day calendar system inspired by astronomical cycles and intended as a universal and human-centred approach to timekeeping.
Timeline
2002
Born — Istanbul, Turkey
3 September 2002. Istanbul, the city bridging Europe and Asia, where the concept of a unified world first took root.
2020
ICF Certified Coach — United Kingdom Coaching Academy
Completed an ACSTH-approved coaching programme accredited by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), United Kingdom Coaching Academy.
2020–2026
BSc Tourism Administration — Boğaziçi University, Istanbul
Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Boğaziçi University — one of Turkey's most prestigious institutions. Studied the intersection of management, culture, and global systems.
2026
Published — Modern Dünyanın Köleleri İçin: Politika
Politics for The Slave of the Modern World — a political investigation tracing the invisible connections between power, capital, and global ideology. Beginning with Columbus and the triangular trade, the book moves through the Opium Wars, American hegemony, the European Union project, the Israel question, a potential Pacific War, and the Georgia Guidestones. First volume of a four-part series covering Politics, Finance, Religion, and the State.
2026–2028
MA International Relations & Diplomatic Studies — VŠE Prague
Prague University of Economics and Business (Vysoká škola ekonomická v Praze). Specialising in international relations and diplomatic studies — the academic foundation for the UWF's structural vision.
Education
My educational path has never been a straight line.
For many years, I assumed I would become an engineer. Like many students in Turkey, I spent most of high school preparing for the country's highly competitive university entrance examinations with a focus on mathematics and science. At different times, I considered mechanical engineering, software engineering, and later industrial engineering, attracted by their analytical and systems-oriented nature.
A few months before the university entrance exam, however, I realised that what interested me most was not engineering itself, but the intersection between systems, people, management, and ideas. I wanted a field that would leave as many doors open as possible and give me the freedom to explore different interests rather than commit to a single profession too early.
Turkey's university admissions system is based on nationwide examinations taken by more than two million students each year. I ranked 4,373rd nationally and was admitted to Boğaziçi University, widely regarded as one of Turkey's most prestigious and internationally oriented universities.
I chose Tourism Administration not because I wanted to work exclusively in tourism, but because the programme represented an unusual intersection of disciplines. It combined management, economics, sociology, psychology, finance, history, ethics, culture, and foreign languages within a single curriculum. The programme offered both academic flexibility and the opportunity to pursue my own projects and interests outside the classroom.
Some of the courses that left the strongest impression on me had little to do with traditional business education: ethics, mythology, cultural studies, beverages and wine, psychology, and various interdisciplinary electives. Looking back, the degree became less about preparing for a specific career and more about exposing me to a wide range of ideas and ways of thinking.
Like many students of my generation, my university experience was shaped by extraordinary circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic and the devastating earthquakes in Turkey led to extended periods of online education and significantly changed campus life. As a result, university did not entirely become the experience I had once imagined. Nevertheless, it gave me the freedom to experiment, pursue independent projects, and discover new intellectual interests.
During my studies, I also had the opportunity to participate in the Work and Travel programme in the United States, an experience that broadened my perspective on cultures, work, and everyday life beyond Turkey.
In September 2026, I will begin my Master's degree in International Relations and Diplomatic Studies at the Prague University of Economics and Business (VŠE). In many ways, this choice follows the same logic that shaped my undergraduate education. Although centred on international relations and diplomacy, the programme is rooted in a university traditionally known for economics and business and offers another interdisciplinary environment where politics, economics, history, and global affairs meet.
I do not see education as a process that ends with a degree. Whether through universities, books, writing, or future teaching, I expect learning and sharing ideas to remain a lifelong part of my work.
Writing & Research
Writing entered my life long before I ever considered publishing a book.
Around the age of sixteen, a close friend and I often talked about writing a collection of essays inspired by Montaigne's Essays. At the time, the idea remained little more than conversations and scattered notes, but it planted a seed that never entirely disappeared.
A few years later, my interests shifted toward psychology, personal development, and entrepreneurship. Around 2018 and 2019, I began creating content online and started writing my first long-form texts: notes, essays, and eventually books about self-development, planning, and the ideas that had helped me make sense of my own experiences. Some of these writings later became digital books that I published and shared online.
Over time, however, my interests expanded. University introduced me to new questions and new fields of study. My reading gradually moved toward history, philosophy, religion, politics, and the development of civilisations. As my interests changed, so did my writing.
I eventually realised that I rarely write because I want to publish something. More often, I write because an idea refuses to leave my mind. I tend to revisit the same questions repeatedly — while walking, travelling, or simply thinking — and every time I do, the idea changes slightly. Writing became my way of giving those thoughts a permanent form, allowing them to evolve beyond endless internal conversations.
What begins as a note often grows into something much larger. A single idea may become an essay, a collection of reflections, a research project, or an entire book. In this way, writing has become less of a profession and more of a method for organising curiosity.
Today, my work moves in several different directions simultaneously. One path is dedicated to political and historical research, including the continuation of my book series that began with Modern Dünyanın Köleleri İçin: Politika. Another consists of essays and reflections on various subjects that have occupied my curiosity over the years. A third path explores fiction through A Man Out of Time, a novel born from questions about culture, identity, and the experience of being displaced in time.
I keep most of my notes digitally, and in many ways this website serves as a second brain — a place to organise ideas, preserve unfinished thoughts, and connect projects that might otherwise remain scattered across notebooks and files.
Digital & Media Projects
My relationship with the internet began early. I created my first YouTube channel in primary school, uploading gaming videos about Battlefield Play4Free and experimenting with video editing, content creation, and online communities long before I understood any of those concepts professionally.
Throughout my teenage years, I constantly created new projects. Some focused on gaming and entertainment, others on educational content, facts, and history. Looking back, I realise that I was rarely interested in a specific niche itself — I was interested in the process of building something online, understanding how platforms worked, and seeing how ideas spread.
In May 2019, I launched an anonymous Instagram page called Başarı Sanatı (The Art of Success). Initially focused on personal development, entrepreneurship, and productivity, the project gradually evolved into one of Turkey's early educational and self-improvement pages in short-form video format. At a time when platforms such as TikTok were still widely dismissed in Turkey, I saw them simply as new mediums through which educational content could be delivered.
Over the following years, the project grew rapidly. The Instagram page reached more than 183,000 followers, while the TikTok account grew to approximately 35,000 followers. Some of my videos reached millions of views, and the platform eventually became a place where I experimented with digital products, partnerships, online communities, and content strategies.
Along the way, I published digital books, sold nearly a thousand copies across different projects, collaborated with brands, and attempted to build small online communities centred around personal growth and accountability. Not every experiment succeeded, but each one taught me something about human behaviour, communication, and the psychology of communities.
I have created dozens of online projects over the years — probably close to forty accounts and experiments across different platforms and topics. Only a handful became financially successful, but the process itself taught me lessons that numbers alone never could.
Perhaps the most important lesson was learning the difference between a hobby and a business. I often began projects out of genuine curiosity and enjoyment, only to realise later that turning something you love into work fundamentally changes your relationship with it. Some creators thrive in that transition; others slowly lose the passion that made them start in the first place.
Looking back, I do not regret leaving many of these projects behind. I see them as different seasons of my life, each reflecting the questions and interests that occupied me at the time. Entrepreneurship, personal development, history, writing, politics — each period left behind skills, experiences, and ideas that continue to influence my work today.
Although I no longer see myself primarily as a social media creator, I suspect that creating and sharing ideas online will always remain part of my life. The formats may change, the subjects may change, and the platforms may change, but the desire to build, explore, and communicate ideas has remained remarkably constant.
Projects & Experiments
I have always been drawn to experimentation.
Whenever a new subject captures my curiosity, my instinct is rarely to simply study it — I usually want to build something around it. Over the years, this tendency has led me into a wide variety of projects: social media communities, digital products, podcasts, NFT collections, websites, educational initiatives, and collaborative experiments with friends.
During the NFT boom, I became fascinated by the intersection of art, technology, storytelling, and online communities. One of the projects I co-created was Symbiotic Worms, a collection of nearly two thousand digital collectibles set in a fictional universe where technologically advanced worms evolve into different forms and expand across the cosmos. Beyond the NFTs themselves, the project became an opportunity to experiment with digital illustration, worldbuilding, rarity systems, and online community design.
Not every project succeeded commercially, and many never moved beyond the experimental stage. Looking back, I have come to appreciate these projects less for their outcomes and more for what they taught me: how communities form, why people become attached to ideas, and how difficult it can be to transform curiosity into a sustainable business.
Podcasting has also appeared repeatedly throughout my life. Some projects were simply conversations between friends that we felt deserved to be recorded. Others became more structured initiatives. More recently, I have been involved in a university podcast project exploring the characteristics and perspectives of Generation Z alongside fellow students and an academic mentor.
Over time, I realised that I am less interested in building a single lifelong project than I am in exploring different ideas through different mediums. Some experiments last a few weeks, others continue for years, and many quietly disappear. I have learned to see this not as inconsistency, but as a natural consequence of curiosity.
If there is one recurring lesson behind these projects, it is that I enjoy creating things for their own sake. Some become businesses, some become stories, and some remain unfinished ideas in a notebook. All of them, however, have shaped the way I think and work today.
Sports & Physical Discipline
Physical activity has been a recurring part of my life, though never in a strictly linear or professional direction. It has evolved through different sports, disciplines, and phases rather than a single long-term commitment.
In childhood and early adolescence, I was significantly heavier relative to my age and height. This changed over time through consistent exposure to different physical activities. One of the earliest structured experiences was swimming, which I practiced for several years. During this period, I learned multiple styles, including freestyle, backstroke, and breaststroke. Although I did not fully train in butterfly, the experience in swimming built a strong foundation in water-based discipline and endurance.
Later, I transitioned into water polo at a licensed sports club in Istanbul. This was a more competitive environment involving structured training sessions, team dynamics, and participation in official matches and tournaments in different cities. The training was intense and physically demanding, and it contributed significantly to both fitness and discipline. Competing against older and more experienced players also shaped my understanding of physical performance under pressure.
In high school, I shifted toward gym-based training and bodybuilding-oriented fitness. This phase was more experimental and inconsistent, shaped by periods of motivation rather than a continuous routine. Despite long breaks and fluctuations, it introduced me to structured resistance training and basic physiological adaptation.
Alongside this, I also explored combat sports. I trained in kickboxing for several months, focusing mainly on technique and kicking mechanics. Later, I spent approximately a year training in Muay Thai, which became one of the most structured and consistent physical disciplines I have practiced. Training included striking combinations, conditioning, and technical drills, and it provided a more complete understanding of combat-based movement.
Over time, I also experimented with other movement systems such as calisthenics and Qi Gong. These were shorter phases but contributed to a broader perspective on physical discipline, recovery, and body awareness.
Rather than following a single sport consistently, my approach has been shaped by exploration. Each discipline introduced a different aspect of physicality — endurance, strength, coordination, or control — and none of them were entirely abandoned, as skills tend to remain even when not actively practiced.
Core Principles & Working Style
My working and creation pattern is cyclical. I usually go through periods of intense focus and production, followed by long pauses where I step back completely. This is not a planned system but more of a natural rhythm that has repeated across different projects.
I tend to lean toward perfectionism. The desire to make something fully complete or correct often slows down execution. Over time, I have become aware of this and started intentionally shifting toward sustainability instead — because perfection tends to produce short bursts of output, while sustainability allows continuity.
I also follow a trial-and-learning approach. However, there is a recurring pattern: when I begin to understand a subject deeply, I naturally want to start producing or teaching it. But shortly after, interest can fade once I feel I have understood enough. This creates a gap between learning and long-term production.
Tools & Skills
Over time, my experience has expanded across different tools and mediums: video production for short-form and social content, podcast creation and conversational formats, long-form and structured writing, basic design and visual creation, and various sports disciplines including swimming, fitness, kickboxing, and Muay Thai. Language learning and multilingual thinking have also been consistent threads. Coding is not a central focus, but has been used occasionally as a supporting tool — including the development of this website.
What I Learned
Across these phases, several consistent patterns emerged. Audience–content alignment matters more than content quality alone. Platforms behave very differently depending on region and context. Virality does not necessarily translate into sustainability. Turning a hobby into work often changes the relationship with it in ways that are difficult to reverse. Consistency matters more than intensity. And perfectionism, while it improves short-term quality, tends to reduce long-term output.
Content Philosophy
My relationship with content creation has changed over time. It started as simple sharing, then evolved into system-building and monetisation attempts, and later shifted again into a more reflective and observational practice.
At this point, content is less of a job or identity and more of a tool for expression and thinking. Writing has become the most stable medium in this structure because it is less dependent on external systems, production complexity, or performance pressure.
Identity Approach
I do not define myself through roles or labels in a fixed way. Doing something does not necessarily mean becoming that thing. Sports, writing, content creation, or any other activity are not identities but temporary structures of engagement.
Over time, I have started to see identity not as a summary of actions, but as the meaning assigned to them. Because of this, I avoid reducing myself to a single category or profession.
Currently Working On
Writing
A Man Out of Time — Novel
A fiction project currently in development. More details to follow.
Study
Politics, History & Czech
Expanding political and historical knowledge in preparation for Prague, alongside learning Czech as a new language.
UWF
Foundations of a Civilisation
Not a project with a deadline — more an ongoing reflection. Evaluating the core structures any civilisation requires: territorial divisions, governance layers, symbolic identity, founding principles. The kind of thinking that happens in conversations, notes, and quiet consideration rather than formal work.
Languages
English was not something I acquired easily in early education. Throughout primary and secondary school, it remained a persistent difficulty rather than a natural skill. Even during high school, despite repeated exposure, it never fully settled as an intuitive language for me.
A significant shift began during my time at Boğaziçi University's preparatory programme, which coincided with the pandemic period. Daily English instruction, combined with full immersion in English interfaces across all my devices, gradually changed my relationship with the language. Around the same time, I developed a consistent habit of consuming English-language media, particularly TV series.
One of the most influential elements in this process was repeatedly watching sitcoms, especially Two and a Half Men. Watching the same series multiple times created a different learning pattern: the first viewing provided understanding of context, while subsequent repetitions shifted attention toward structure, phrasing, and rhythm of speech. Over time, language stopped being translated and started being processed directly.
During the preparatory year, structured writing practice also played a key role. Weekly essay assignments with detailed feedback helped consolidate grammar, vocabulary, and academic expression. Many of the expressions and structures learned during that period are still actively used today.
Eventually, English became less of a learned subject and more of an operational language for thinking and writing. This shift also changed how other languages are approached. Basic exposure to German, for example, made it easier to recognise structural patterns across languages, especially within Indo-European language families.
Language learning, for me, is not limited to communication. It is closely connected to cognition. Thinking in different languages creates different mental frameworks, and switching between them often changes how ideas are formed rather than just how they are expressed.
English eventually became the first language in which I consistently write and develop ideas. Turkish remains the foundation, but English functions as a parallel system where thought is often less constrained by expectation and context, allowing for a different form of expression.
Turkish
Native
English
Fluent
German
Beginner
Czech
Learning
Influences
If you ask me who I am influenced by, I cannot give you many names — it is simply not in my nature to be a devoted fan or a permanent follower of any man or woman. But I can say with certainty that these people have left the deepest mark on my thinking compared to anyone else.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Civilizational transformation, visionary leadership, structural reform
Aytunç Altındal
Hidden history, esoteric power structures, Turkish intellectual tradition
Carl Gustav Jung
Archetypes, the collective unconscious, shadow work, individuation
Manly Palmer Hall
Secret teachings, ancient philosophy, the symbolic architecture of civilizations
Francis Bacon
New Atlantis, utopian civilisation design, the idea of a scientifically governed society
Coaching
ICF Certified · ACSTH Approved · United Kingdom Coaching Academy · 2020
My coaching background began as a deeply personal practice — a structured method for exploring my own inner landscape, shadow sides, and psychological patterns. Rooted in Jungian frameworks and self-inquiry, coaching became a tool for understanding rather than performance. The formal ICF certification formalised what was already a personal discipline.
Connect
For social, research, coaching, or collaborative inquiries.
Socials & Network
Reach out to me for social, research, coaching, or collaborative inquiries.
Global Instagram Business Account
instagram.com/itsardaorakTurkish Instagram Business Account
instagram.com/ardaoraktrPersonal Instagram Account
instagram.com/arda.orakLinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/arda-orak-750791389/E-mail Address
ardaorak@gmail.com