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Brandishing their javelins and letting out a bloodcurdling war cry, the Ottoman horsemen charge at a thunderous gallop. Suddenly one is hit and thrown from his horse – making dozens of children gasp as they film the scene on their smartphones.

It may be 2017, but Istanbul rolled back the years last weekend with the Ethnic Sports Cultural Festival (EKF), which aims to promote the sports practised by modern Turks’ ancestors – from the nomadic horsemen of Central Asia to the Janissaries, the elite troops of the Ottoman empire.

More than 800 athletes took part in traditional sports from Anatolia and Central Asia which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government wants to develop to celebrate the glory days of Turkey’s past.

“We want to revive our traditional values, beginning with our sports, in order to move forward with these values,” Bilal Erdogan, one of the president’s sons and an archery fan who is also EKF’s sponsor, told AFP.

A huge area on the European side of Istanbul usually used for political rallies was transformed into an Ottoman encampment for the four-day event.

Wrestlers, archers and riders showed off their skills in between traditional cooking workshops, Central Asian dancing and carpet-weaving.

Turkish Sports Minister Akif Cagatay Kilic promised the government would provide further financial support to develop such activities and suggested it would encourage clubs to show more interest in traditional sports.

Traditional Turkish wrestling champion Sadi Bakir – bare-chested and covered in oil – said “interest in the sport has increased in recent times and the state is investing more effort in this field”.

As a result, he said, “at the last European (wrestling) championships, we won five gold medals. The past power of the Turks is re-emerging.”

Yakup, a traditional archery instructor, also said interest in the discipline has exploded. “We have over 1,000 members” in his archery club, he said as he put arrows in a leather quiver.

For the master archer, young people’s enthusiasm comes mainly from television series about the Ottoman sultans which have multiplied in the past few years.