Geert Wilders -- the controversial and outspoken leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom and high-profile candidate for prime minister of the Netherlands in 2017 -- will be put on trial for inciting hatred, a court determined Friday.

The Hague District Court rejected an appeal by Wilders' attorneys to have the charges thrown out.

"Prosecuted for voicing the opinion of millions.The Netherlands is like Turkey. Displeasing political opinions are being silenced in court," Wilders wrote in a tweet in response Friday.

At issue in the case is an incident in 2014 when Wilders asked whether a crowd wanted "fewer or more Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands?"

The crowd shouted back "fewer" and Wilders replied, "we're going to organize that."

Wilders later Friday tweeted out a picture of the incumbent Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, smiling and putting his hand on the shoulder Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with the caption, "Let's criminalize our political opponents!"

Wilders urged his followers on Twitter to remember the upcoming election in March 2017. The BBC reports Wilders' party had been leading the polls, but recently lost ground to Rutte's People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. Wilders, a supporter U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, told a group at the Republican National Convention in July that he could be the next Dutch prime minister.

Trump has variously called for a temporary "total and complete shutdown" of Muslim immigration to the U.S. and "extreme vetting" of new Muslim immigrants, in a policy proposal that has been inconsistently detailed .

"I have to agree with that kind of policy," Wilders said in an interview at the convention in Cleveland, defending Trump's position. "I believe that not all Muslims are bad people, but I believe that the Islam is something that goes not together with liberty and with freedom."

His position goes farther than Trump's, however. He objects to the practice of Islam in Western countries, and has called for a ban on the Koran .