Turks pay final respects to "Last Ottoman"

Mourners attend the funeral of Osman Ertugrul Osmanoglu at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul September 26, 2009.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turks paid their final respects on Saturday to the most senior member of the former Ottoman dynasty at his funeral in Istanbul, which ministers attended in a sign of official recognition for the former exile.

Hundreds of mourners filled the courtyard of the Blue Mosque in the historic center of Turkey's largest city and lined up before the coffin, draped in a Turkish flag, of Osman Ertugrul Osmanoglu.

Three ministers attended the funeral of Osmanoglu, whose grandfather Abdulhamit II was the last Ottoman sultan to rule with absolute power.

Osmanoglu, dubbed the "last Ottoman" by the Turkish media, died in an Istanbul hospital of kidney failure on Wednesday at the age of 97.

Reverence for the former Ottoman Empire has grown in recent years under the rule of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, whose Islamist-rooted government came to power in 2002 and granted Osmanoglu Turkish citizenship in 2004.

Abdulhamit II was the 34th Ottoman sultan and ruled during the decline of the Ottoman Empire until he was deposed in 1909 and succeeded by Mehmed V.

Osmanoglu, born in 1912 in an Istanbul palace, and other members of his family were exiled when the Ottoman Empire collapsed and was succeeded by the Turkish Republic in 1923.

He spent much of his life in the United States and came to Turkey in 1992 under an amnesty.

His burial place was a cemetery near the Blue Mosque where his grandfather and other leading Ottoman officials are interred.

(Writing by Daren Butler, editing by Tim Pearce)