October 20 - Turkey's Apparent Shift Over Kobani; Media-Stoked Fear and Paranoia Over Ebola; Turkey's Reluctance to Get Involved Militarily in Syria

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the apparent reversal on the part of Turkey which up until now has appeared indifferent to the plight of Syrian Kurds under siege by the Islamic State in the border town of Kobani. David Phillips, a foreign affairs expert and former senior advisor to the U.S. Department of State in the administrations of Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama and author of “The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East”, joins us to discuss whether Turkey’s decision to allow Kurdish fighters and weapons to cross into Syria from Turkey is cosmetic or represents a strategic shift, given that Turkey still will not allow the U.S. to use the NATO airbase nearby at Incirlik in Turkey.

Part 2

Then we look into the exaggerated fear and paranoia being stoked by the media over two cases of Ebola in the United States while little attention and focus is being applied to West Africa where 5,000 have died and where the source of the Ebola outbreak in located and must be contained before the disease is allowed to spread further. Roxane Silver, a professor of Psychology and Social Behavior, Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, Irvine, joins us to discuss comparisons with the hysteria generated by the media over the Boston Marathon bombings that she studied which found that individuals who were exposed to a great deal of the media reported more acute stress than did people who were actually at the marathon.  

Part 3

Then finally, Henri Barkey, who served on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff dealing with the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean and Intelligence, joins us to discuss why Turkey has been so reluctant to get involved in Syria while still insisting that the removal of the Assad regime should be the number one priority, at the same time appearing to be in denial about the extent to which Turkey turned a blind eye to the creation of the Islamic State which they helped facilitate.