Even as the West looks back over Turkey's blighted human rights record for 2018, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is warning the United States of pending military interventions against Kurds in northern Syria.

On Dec. 14, during his speech at an Islamic Cooperation Organization conference in Istanbul, Erdogan said Turkish fighters will enter Manbij unless the United States removes the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) from the area. The United States and the YPG have fought together against the Islamic State in Syria. Turkey considers the YPG to be affiliated with a terrorist group.

Before that threat, he had announced Dec. 12 that a Turkish military operation against Kurdish groups (which he called "separatist terrorists") in northern Syria, east of the Euphrates River, is imminent. He specifically said, however, that his forces would not target US forces there.

According to some observers, these pronouncements should be seen as a ploy by Erdogan to influence local elections scheduled for March 31. It’s no secret that Turkey’s financial indicators for the first quarter of 2019 don’t seem promising. Therefore, Erdogan needs to divert the public's attention to foreign policy and rally the citizens around security issues by mobilizing nationalist feelings.