Poor polling behind Afrin operation

T24 columnist Hasan Cemal, assessing the harsh and ugly pronouncements AKP President Erdoğan has made about the Afrin operation, indicated that Erdoğan was preparing to take Turkey into a new “foreign adventure” to enable him to win the 2019 elections. Cemal commented as follows in his column today:
 
This electoral calculation paid off on 1 November. By pressing the war button, he won back the nine electoral points he lost on 7 June. It would appear that he is now playing the same dangerous game, the “war game.” For, the electoral polls are not good. The electoral research placed before him is somehow incapable of meeting his hopes. This is also making Erdoğan tense. The tenser he gets, the less he knows what to do. His style is getting cramped.
 
He is getting harsher. As I have just pointed out, this dangerous game may aid him at the ballot box, but it will visit trouble on Turkey. It will throw Turkey into the fire. It will drag Turkey into the pit of hell. But it is apparent that Erdoğan is not particularly perturbed by fresh deaths, fresh migration and fresh human tragedies.