French Municipal Candidate Retracts Call for Turkish-Origin Supporters Amid Backlash

In his post dated Thursday, January 9, Mohamed Dine, a candidate in the municipal elections in Clichy-sous-Bois, announces that he is "looking for Turkish men and women" to strengthen his list, reports Le Parisien. This recruitment did not take long to provoke an outcry on the web.

Julien Odoul, president of the Rassemblement national (RN) group in the regional council of Burgundy, accuses Mohamed Dine of "wanting to communalize" his list. "A person’s origins are not a selection criterion. But beyond the question of origins, the fact of posting a call on Facebook, it’s not very serious. If you are locally rooted, you use word of mouth to find competent people," says Meziane Abdelali, the candidate’s opponent.

According to the PS mayor of the city, Olivier Klein, it is clearly a mistake. "If we work and live in Clichy, we know the territory well enough to put together a representative list. It balances out naturally," he says.

Faced with the scale of the controversy, Mohamed Dine deleted his post and tries to defend himself. "I totally assume what I wrote. If I launch such an appeal, it’s because I want to put together a list that is representative of the inhabitants of Clichy-sous-Bois," he says. For someone who has been active in traditional parties for 25 years, it is not a question of his origins or those of others. "If the abstention rate is very high in a city like Clichy-sous-Bois, it may be because people don’t feel sufficiently represented," says the MoDem candidate.