Turkey’s Koç University has terminated a contract to publish a book on Ottoman history due to the authors' use of the term Armenian Genocide, according to one of the book’s editors Onur Inal, Medya News reports.

The university requested the removal or rephrasing of the expression, and terminated the contract when İnal and his co-editor Yavuz Köse refused, according to the historian.

Koç University Press requested the revision “on the grounds that it might result in legal problems”, the editors said in a statement. They continued:

“We responded to the publisher, telling them that we would not accept their request to remove or rephrase the sentence, because using the expression itself was not ‘banned’. Additionally, we informed the publisher that the sentence containing the expression was a quote from another work, and a translation that failed to remain true to the original text would amount to censorship.”

The cancellation of their contract is “inconsistent with academic freedom and publishing ethics”, the scholars said.