Methodology of Awakening
Explains how your personal data is collected, processed, and protected when you use the Protodism platform (website, publications, and related digital services).
Protodism ("we," "us," "the platform") values the privacy and security of the personal data of everyone ("you," "user") who visits or uses our website and related digital services (the "Service"). This Privacy Policy explains in detail what personal data we collect through the Service, for what purposes and on what legal basis; with whom and why we may share that data; how long we retain it; and the rights you hold as a data subject.
This Policy covers the website on which the Protodism book and its academic articles are read through a membership account, our contact forms, and, where available, comment or feedback sections and newsletter announcements. The Service does not currently involve any paid sale or commercial transaction; if such a feature is added in the future, this Policy will be updated accordingly. By using the Service, you accept the practices described in this Policy; if you do not accept them, please do not use the Service.
This Policy has been prepared primarily with regard to Turkey's Law on the Protection of Personal Data No. 6698 ("KVKK") and the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"). Because a meaningful share of our users may access the Service from the United States, certain rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA/CPRA") are addressed separately in Section 13.
Under GDPR Art. 4 and KVKK Art. 3, the data controller responsible for personal data processed through the Service is:
Zeki Coşar
Protodism Platform, a natural person established in Turkey
Email: privacy@protodism.com
Websites: Protodizm.com (Turkish) - Protodism.com (English)
The controller can be reached through this Policy by email only; no postal or physical address is published. Data-protection disclosure obligations require that a data subject be able to reach the controller in practice; they do not require a home or business address to be made public. Separately, if you are required to register with Turkey's Data Controllers' Registry ("VERBİS"), that registration itself requires an address to be filed with the Board; this is a distinct, non-public record held by the Board and is not something you need to display on the Service. Whether VERBİS registration applies to you depends on exemption criteria tied to employee count, processing volume, and whether special category data processing forms your main line of activity; we recommend confirming this with a lawyer.
If you operate through a legal entity (a company, publisher, etc.), update this section with that entity's registered name and registration number. If you regularly offer services to users in the European Economic Area and are not established there, you may be required under GDPR Art. 27 to appoint an EU representative; this requires separate legal assessment.
Personal data: Any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (name, email address, IP address, cookie identifiers, etc.).
Special category data: Under GDPR Art. 9 and KVKK Art. 6, sensitive categories such as religious or philosophical belief, health, racial or ethnic origin, and political opinion. Given the subject matter of Protodism, comments, messages, or feedback that users voluntarily share with us may contain religious or philosophical views; such content may qualify as special category data and is addressed separately in Sections 4.1 and 7.
Processing: Any operation performed on personal data, including its collection, recording, storage, alteration, transfer, and erasure.
Data subject: The natural person to whom personal data relates: you.
Data controller: The natural or legal person who determines the purposes and means of processing personal data and is responsible for establishing and managing the data-recording system.
Data processor: A third-party service provider that processes personal data on behalf of, and under the instructions of, the data controller (e.g., hosting, email-delivery, or analytics providers).
Cookie: A small text file placed on your browser by a website you visit, used to recognize you on subsequent visits.
Reading the Service's content (the book and article texts) requires creating a membership account; the Service does not currently involve any paid sale or payment, only membership-based reading access. In this context, the data you provide directly includes:
At present: the Service does not offer paid book sales, pre-orders, or any other commercial transaction, so no payment information, delivery address, or shipping data is collected. If these features are added in the future, this Policy will be updated and any additional consent or disclosure required will be put in place.
When you visit the Service, the following data is collected automatically from your browser or device, primarily through cookies and similar technologies (see Section 8 for details):
Use of social sharing buttons, embedded content (e.g., video players), or third-party sign-in options (e.g., "Sign in with Google"), the relevant third-party service may transmit limited identity or profile information to us under its own privacy policy. There is no such integrations are used on this platform.
Your personal data is collected electronically through direct interactions such as filling out forms on the Service, subscribing to our newsletter, contacting us by email, leaving a comment, or completing a purchase. Automatically collected data is gathered electronically through cookies, log files, and similar tracking technologies each time you visit the Service. All collection is carried out in accordance with the legal bases set out in KVKK Art. 5–6 and GDPR Art. 6 (see Section 7).
We process the personal data we collect for the following purposes:
To be explicit: data collected through the Service is not processed for any commercial, sales, or marketing purpose, and is not transferred to third parties for marketing purposes.
The terms you accept when creating a membership account constitute a contract; processing your name, email address, and password is necessary for the performance of that contract (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b); KVKK Art. 5(2)(c)). Securing the Service, preventing misuse, and keeping basic usage statistics rely on our legitimate interests, provided these do not override your fundamental rights and freedoms (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f); KVKK Art. 5(2)(f)). For processing that falls outside these grounds and is not strictly necessary, such as newsletter subscriptions, special category data shared in comments, or analytics/marketing cookies, we rely on your explicit consent (GDPR Art. 6(1)(a); KVKK Art. 5(2)). Special category data, such as comments disclosing religious or philosophical views, is processed only with your explicit consent under GDPR Art. 9(2)(a) and KVKK Art. 6(2).
The Service uses cookies and similar technologies (tracking pixels, local storage, etc.) to improve your experience and to measure site performance. We use the following categories of cookies:
| Category | Purpose | Consent required? |
|---|---|---|
| Strictly necessary / technical cookies | Enable core site functions (session handling, security, language preference) | No: legitimate interest |
| Performance / analytics cookies | Measure visitor numbers, navigation paths, and site performanceGoogle Analytics MonsterInsights | Yes |
| Functionality cookies | Remember your preferences (e.g., theme, language) | Yes |
On your first visit to the Service, you can manage your preferences through a cookie-consent notice. You may reject or delete cookies at any time through your browser settings; note, however, that disabling strictly necessary cookies may prevent parts of the Service from functioning properly.
We share your personal data only with the following limited categories of recipients, and only to the extent necessary to achieve the purposes described above:
The Service does not currently include a payment or shipping/delivery function, so no data is shared with payment or logistics providers; this section will be updated if such features are added.
Other than as described above, we do not sell, rent, or share your personal data with third parties for their own marketing purposes without your explicit consent.
Our hosting provider, Hostinger International Ltd., is registered in the Republic of Cyprus, an EU member state; a transfer of data to Cyprus is therefore an intra-EU transfer and requires no additional safeguard under the GDPR. According to Hostinger's own privacy policy, user data may also be processed and stored in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Lithuania, and, to the extent necessary for the service, in other countries as well. For these further transfers, Hostinger relies on applicable adequacy decisions (e.g., for the United Kingdom) or on Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs); current details are available in Hostinger's own Privacy Policy (hostinger.com/legal/privacy-policy) and Data Processing Agreement (hostinger.com/legal/dpa).
The Service also uses third-party providers, including Google (Google Analytics, Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights) and Anthropic (Claude via MxChat). Where these providers process personal data outside the European Economic Area or Türkiye, such transfers are carried out in accordance with the safeguards and transfer mechanisms provided under their applicable privacy policies, data processing terms and applicable data protection legislation. Current information regarding the locations and safeguards applicable to such processing is available in the respective providers' privacy documentation.
The same framework applies under the KVKK: your personal data may be transferred, under KVKK Art. 9, to a country recognized by Turkey's Data Protection Board as providing adequate protection, or, absent such recognition, under the Board's authorization together with a written undertaking between the parties.
We retain your personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, subject to any longer retention periods required by applicable law:
Once the applicable retention period expires, your personal data is deleted, destroyed, or anonymized in accordance with KVKK Art. 7 and its implementing regulation, and, where applicable, GDPR's storage-limitation principle.
We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures, in line with KVKK Art. 12 and GDPR Art. 32, to protect your personal data against unlawful access, loss, alteration, or disclosure. These measures include encryption of communications (HTTPS/TLS), access authorization and role-based restrictions, regular security updates and backups, and data-processing agreements with our service providers. That said, no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is completely secure; while we use commercially reasonable efforts to protect your data, we cannot guarantee absolute security. In the event of a data breach, we will notify the Turkish Data Protection Board and/or affected individuals, and where applicable the relevant EU supervisory authority, within the timeframes required by applicable law.
If you are located in the European Economic Area, you have the right of access (Art. 15), the right to rectification (Art. 16), the right to erasure or "to be forgotten" (Art. 17), the right to restriction of processing (Art. 18), the right to data portability (Art. 20), the right to object (Art. 21), and the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (Art. 22). Where processing is based on your consent, you may withdraw it at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.
If you are located in Turkey, under KVKK Art. 11 you have the right to learn whether your personal data is being processed, to request information about it, to learn its purpose and whether it is used in accordance with that purpose, to know the third parties to whom it is transferred domestically or abroad, to request correction of incomplete or inaccurate data, to request erasure or destruction where the conditions of KVKK Art. 7 are met, to request that corrections or deletions be notified to third parties to whom the data has been transferred, to object to a result that is to your detriment arising solely from automated analysis, and to claim compensation for damages arising from unlawful processing.
If you are a California resident, you have the right to know what personal data is collected, used, disclosed, or "sold" (as broadly defined by California law), the right to request deletion, the right to request correction, the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights. We wish to note that we do not sell your personal data to third parties for monetary consideration within the meaning of the CCPA.
To exercise any of the rights described above, please contact us at privacy@protodism.com or through the contact details in Section 19, together with information sufficient to verify your identity. We will respond to your request free of charge within one month under GDPR Art. 12, or within thirty days under KVKK Art. 13; depending on the complexity of the request, this period may be extended once, and we will explain the reason for any extension. If your request is denied, you retain the right to lodge a complaint with the Turkish Data Protection Board under KVKK Art. 14, or with the relevant supervisory authority in your EU member state.
The Service is not directed at individuals under the age of 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If we become aware that a child under 18 has provided us with personal data, we will delete it within a reasonable period. If you believe your child has provided us with personal data, please contact us using the details in Section 19.
The Service may contain links to third-party websites that are outside our control, such as bibliography or footnote references and social media profiles. This Policy applies only to the Service; we are not responsible for the privacy practices of any linked third-party site, and we encourage you to review that site's own privacy policy before providing it with any personal data.
We may revise this Policy from time to time to reflect changes in applicable law or in the Service itself. We will announce material changes at least 7 days before they take effect, by posting a visible notice on the Service and/or emailing newsletter subscribers. The current version of this Policy will always be available on this page; your continued use of the Service after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy.
This Policy is governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Turkey, without prejudice to the mandatory provisions of the GDPR for users located in the European Economic Area. Any dispute arising from this Policy shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Turkish courts and execution offices of the controller's place of residence Adana, without affecting a data subject's right to lodge a complaint with their own national supervisory authority as described in Section 14.
If you have any question, request, or complaint regarding this Privacy Policy or the processing of your personal data, you may reach us through the following channels:
Email: privacy@protodism.com
Website contact form: https://protodism.com/contact
For direct contact with Turkey's Personal Data Protection Board: kvkk.gov.tr