July 23 - Kenya Awaits Obama's "Homecoming"; Senate Republicans Dis Kerry's Iran Deal; Could Turkey's Decision to Allow the US to Use the Incirlik Airbase be a Game Changer?

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with President Obama’s trip to Kenya and go to Nairobi to speak with Kefa Otiso, a Professor of Geography and Director of the Global Village at Bowling Green State University who is the founding president of the U.S.-based Kenya Scholars and Studies Association. We discuss the country’s excited anticipation of Obama’s “homecoming” arrival on Friday which has heightened security concerns because of recent terrorist atrocities by al Shabaab leading to a rebuke of CNN by Kenya’s Interior Minister who has demanded they apologize for calling his country “a hotbed of terrorism”.  And, before heading on to meet with Ethiopia’s authoritarian regime, Obama will meet with Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta, who was up until recently facing trial at the International Criminal Court charged with orchestrating election violence in 2007-2008 that claimed over 1,100 lives.

Part 2

Then we go to Beirut, Lebanon and speak with a political analyst and commentator on Middle East geopolitics,Sharmine Narwani. She joins us to discuss the local reaction to Secretary of State Kerry’s efforts to sell the P5+1 deal with Iran to a skeptical if not insultingly disrespectful U.S. Senate where the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee opened the hearing by charging that Kerry had been “fleeced” by the Iranians. We will also get an update on the war next door in Syria where Turkey appears to be taking a more forceful stance against the Islamic State.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the consequences of a shift in Turkey’s policy towards the Islamic State following a terrorist bombing of Kurdish students inside Turkey near the Syrian border and Thursday’s clash on the border in which a Turkish soldier was killed by fire from Islamic State fighters inside Syria. The author of “The Kurdish Spring: A new Map for the Middle East’, David Phillips, the director of the Peace-building and Rights Program at the institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, joins us to argue that the decision by Turkey to allow the U.S. to use the Incirlik NATO airbase to strike the Islamic State is a game-changer.