Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the veteran politician who heads the remaining rump of Turkey’s former main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), has been hit by a conference hall rent-a-crowd scandal.

Kilicdaroglu is accused by MPs who have split from the CHP to form a new main opposition party, named New Party, of “doing the palace’s bidding” by willingly using a court decision issued by a “bent” judiciary to retake the leadership of the CHP that he lost to Ozgur Ozel in 2023 – this scandal will do the 77-year-old no favours as he attempts to ready CHP for a battle with the breakaway New Party prior to the next national elections.

Kilicdaroglu is said to have addressed an audience which featured hundreds of recruits paid to swell the seated crowd listening to the speech and applaud heartily.

Ebru Celik, a reporter for opposition newspaper BirGun, who was in the audience, reported that the extras were paid 950 lira ($20) each and were bussed to the event, where they were directed on how to applaud Kilicdaroglu and wave flags. Stage directors, he said, were on hand to urge the recruits to applaud louder.

After reassuming the CHP leadership post, Kilicdaroglu announced that he would purge the party of corruption. His conference hall appearance – originally due to take place at a smaller venue but moved at the last minute to a bigger venue supposedly to cater for “high demand” – included a forceful denunciation of corruption.

“No member of the Republican People’s Party can stand alongside those who engage in corruption,” Kilicdaroglu, who lost to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the last presidential elections, reportedly said, adding: “If you want to commit corruption… you must leave the party immediately.”

Kilicdaroglu’s aides denied that the CHP organised or paid for extras to attend the event. They also condemned journalist Celik, talking of a “terrorist-style dirty trap”.

However, the Financial Times reported how the owner of a casting agency acknowledged in an interview with local television that some attendees had indeed been paid 950 lira each. He termed the money a “token payment” and “a gesture of appreciation” that he gave to them.

The event’s organisers have filed a criminal complaint against Celik and two BirGun editors. They allege insult, the public dissemination of misleading information and calumny. The Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation.

In forming New Party, Ozel alleged the Erdogan administration set out to “occupy” the CHP to create a pliable opposition.

The government insists that the court order that removed Ozel and installed Kilicdaroglu in his place came from a judiciary that is independent and judged, without bias, that there were irregularities in a party conference vote that secured Ozel’s rise to the top of the CHP.

Some 91 MPs walked out on the CHP to join Ozel’s New Party. It is now Turkey’s largest opposition party as the CHP only has 44 lawmakers still in its ranks.

The CHP, founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic, in 1923 is Turkey’s oldest party.

“Those who brought this great party to such a state should be ashamed,” Berk Esen, assistant professor of political science at Istanbul’s Sabanci University, said on X, as cited by the FT.

“As time passes, the mediocrity created by [the CHP’s] illegitimate management will become increasingly apparent,” added Esen.