That has led to speculation that Erdogan, fresh from surviving an attempted coup, wants to crown his 14-year rule in Turkey by annexing chunks of its neighbors. But analysts see a more mundane domestic calculation behind the rhetoric: They say the president is really trying to expand his own powers, not his country's frontiers.

Erdogan still hankers after making his office the focus of all power in Turkey, instead of the largely ceremonial post it was before he took over — and, on paper, still is. But he doesn't have support in parliament to make that constitutional change — and maybe not in the country, either, if it went to a referendum. In both cases, the likeliest bloc of voters to be won over is nationalists who aren't at all averse to talk of Turkey's historic claims on nearby lands, or military attacks on Kurdish groups who live there.

"Erdogan is seeking to expand his support base among nationalists by talking tough over regional matters," said Nihat Ali Ozcan, an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation in Ankara. It's "part of his political calculations for a presidential system," Ozcan said.