Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan clearly has big dreams. He made a deal with Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation to build three nuclear power plants. Since 2001 the government has declined to further invest in its dilapidated conventional power system, which is largely dependent on importing natural gas, as the supplier of nation’s electricity. The system is inadequate.

The $20 billion deal with Moscow, in the works since 2010, would build the Akkuyu nuclear power plant ? Turkey’s first nuclear plant ever ? which is planned to be operational in 2023. Turkey is only the latest country to make a deal with the Russian energy corporation, after Iran, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. This is regarded as not only a Moscow play for power in the Middle East, but a new source of desperately needed revenue. Russia has been hurt by sanctions imposed on Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine.

Turkey is looking toward China as well. Beijing has finally ratified the nuclear agreement it reached with Turkey in 2012, a $20 billion deal for the construction of four nuclear power plants. Although there have been no sales, in 2008 Turkey reached an “Agreement for Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation” with the United States.

Turkey says its budding nuclear power program is for civilian purposes only. That, of course, is what they all say. Turkey’s interest in nuclear energy dates from the 1960s, when it studied the feasibility of building a 300- to 400-megawatt nuclear power plant, a full three decades before the rise of Mr. Erdogan and his AKP party. But now the program takes on added significance.

A nuclear power industry could easily move on to weapons development and production, and given Mr. Erdogan’s pretensions for return to imperial Turkish ambitions, that could be the dream he holds in his heart of coldest hearts.