The logo and the name of our Ankara-based publishing house was inspired by the symbols of the Phrygian civilization and their capital Gordium (or Gordion), in the vicinities of modern-day Ankara. The myths and symbols of this ancient people lived on for centuries while changing, transforming, and influencing other peoples. The Phrygian cap in our logo was also born out of these myths, and became a symbol of liberty in distant parts of the world in later centuries. In the Roman Republic, emancipated slaves wore the Phrygian cap as a sign of their newfound freedom. In modern times, the Phrygian cap reappeared in the American Revolution, in the anticolonial independence movements in South America and in the French Revolution.
Founded in 2023 by Pınar Üre Çolak in Ankara, Gordium Publishing believes in the liberating power of reading and thinking, and is inspired by the symbol that emerged on this land and left a mark on different corners of the world.
Gordium Publishing’s editor-in-chief Pınar Üre Çolak completed her B.A. and M.A. degrees at Bilkent University, Department of International Relations in Ankara. She received her Ph.D. degree in International History from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2014. Her monograph based on her Ph.D. dissertation, Reclaiming Byzantium: Russia, Turkey, and the Archaeological Claim to the Middle East in the 19th Century was published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2020. She published articles and books on knowledge exchange and intellectual encounters between late imperial / early Soviet Russia and late Ottoman / early Republican Turkey. She reviewed articles for many reputed national and international academic journals and for a long time worked as a section editor for 1914-1918-online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War. She taught courses such as Ottoman modernization, Russian and Soviet history at several universities in Ankara and Istanbul.
© 2023 GORDIUM