ANKARA—Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sounded his nationalist alarm on Thursday by claiming that current world order might force Turkey to face “Treaty of Sevres  conditions,” referring to the 1920 document, which, after World War I, partitioned the Ottoman Empire granting Armenians their historical territories seized by the Ottoman Empire.

“At this critical time when there are attempts to restructure the world and our region, if we stop, we will find ourselves facing Sevres conditions,” said Erdogan, whose Thursday speech was aimed at appealing to his nationalist base.

He also used the opportunity to invoke so-called losses suffered by Turkey after the Treaty of Lausanne, which recognized the Republic of Turkey as the successor of the Ottoman Empire, and set the modern-day regional borders for most of Turkey, Greece and the Middle East, including Syria and Iraq.

“We are a nation that still lives with the sorrows of what we lost at Lausanne. To speak frankly, Turkey is going through its greatest struggle since the War of Independence. This is a struggle [to preserve] a single nation, a single homeland, a single state,” said Erdogan, who repeated calls for extending Turkey’s current borders, a move that will impact Syrian, Iraqi and Greek interests in the region.