A scholar at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies has filed a case with the European Court of Human Rights that he says is the first attempt to overturn through that legal channel a controversial provision of Turkey’s penal code that criminalizes “denigrating Turkishness.”

Taner Akçam, a Turkish sociologist and historian, has faced retribution in his home country for his academic work about the killing of as many as 1.5 million Armenians during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, which modern Turkish governments have refused to characterize as genocide. Mr. Akçam has been outspoken in his willingness to do so, in for example his most recent book, A Shameful Act, which was published last year, and he has come under attack as a result.

He was charged under Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code, which has been used frequently against journalists, academics, and writers, and which Amnesty International says “poses a direct threat to the fundamental right to freedom of expression.”

Hrant Dink, a journalist of Armenian origin who was also charged under Article 301, was killed earlier this year. Elif Shafak, an assistant professor of Turkish and women’s studies at the University of Arizona, was acquitted last year of Article 301 charges stemming from her latest novel.

Mr. Akçam was charged with Article 301 violations when he wrote an article in support of Mr. Dink, a friend, before his death, and he says that he has also received many death threats and has been subjected to online harassment, for example through false entries in his online Wikipedia biography. —Aisha Labi