People think Turks or Russians have this nostalgia for their empires when its seen in France and the nostalgia of when USA was the strongest country in the world.
While Russia has clear aspirations of empire and is nearly always the instigator when it comes invading other nations, the Turkish state is very different. Everywhere we are moving is in reaction to others hostile intent against us. Cyprus 1974 is a good example. The greeks broke all agreements and attempted the illegal annexation and genocide of the entire Turkish cypriot population, now Turkey owns half the island. We didnt want that, but the greeks forced our hand.
In Libya we see a similar game, the europeans, russians, egyptions, syrians, isrealis etc were all ganging up together against Turkey to restrict her of her maratime rights. As a result we moved into Libya to break their plans. So now the Turkish army is in Libya.
In Syria and Iraq we have the PKK and its offshoots we have endured decades of terrorism stemming out of those regions, now the Turkish army is in both states and as long as the PKK continues its the long term outlook is Turkey will take control of the entire north of both nations.
Armenia with their Russian and Iranian backers were not only pushing to take Azeri land but were making grand claims that they were going to take eastern Turkey, well now they got crushed and Turkey is deeply entrenched in Azerbaijan.
So to cut a long story short, Turks are not looking for empire and no one looks at these expansions as good things, they are perceived as necessary things to protect the welfare of the Turkish state.
So if they keep wanting to harm us, to discriminate against us, you will end up with a new Turkish empire 50 to 100 years from now.
