Erdogan Toprak, deputy chairman of the opposition Republican People's Party, has said the prime minister "would like to bring the sultan back" - a reference to the old days of the Ottoman Empire before Turkey become a republic.

BBC: Is Turkey's secular system in danger?

On that day the musketry and artillery of Selim the Grim, the Ottoman sultan, blasted to shreds the sword-wielding cavalry of Egypt's 250-year-old Mamluk sultanate, opening the way to 400 years of Ottoman Turkish rule over all but the peripheries of the Arab world.

ECONOMIST: The history of the Arabic-speaking peoples