Abstract:

The first black president of the United States, Barack Obama, took office in 2009. This period is considered a period in which the U.S. political style changes. Obama, unlike former President George W. Bush, said that his country will consult its allies in global political movements. He was also the first U.S. president to clearly emphasize the need for Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders in exchange for recognition and security guarantees for permanent peace in the Middle East. The Obama administration has tried to develop different approaches to protecting the U.S. interests and making them compatible with the regional interests. The aim of this study is to examine the U.S. Middle East policy in the Obama period and to discuss whether the structural realism is in accordance with the external policy behavior proposed. In this context, the work consists of three parts. The first part is theoretically realistic. In the second part, Mearsheimer and Walt, representing the structural realism, will describe the proposals of foreign policy strategy that the United States should follow towards the Middle East in line with its national interests. The last part will discuss Obama’s foreign policy strategies and the foreign policy towards the Middle East. In the analysis and outcome section, we will discuss how coherent the foreign policy of the Obama era is with the opinions of the authors.

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