European Union's Middle East policy

The Middle East region has always been on the agenda from the beginning of human history to the present and has hosted the wars and has never lost its importance as a region where civilizations and three great celestial religions have emerged. Power struggles, power wars, and proxy wars have been the routine of the region. The main aim of this thesis is to reveal the attitudes and policies of the European Union from the day it was founded to the Middle East region and the conflicts in the region. The efforts of the European Union to form a policy towards the region have begun since the early 1970's. In the first part, the characteristics of the Middle East region and the region's features such as socio-economic, geographical and strategic location are examined. In the second part, the foreign policy of the European Union, the basic principles on which the foreign policy is based, the decisions taken on the way to create a common foreign policy, the efforts on foreign policy within the EU, the institutions formed and the stages of foreign policy-making are handled in the historical process. In the third chapter, the policies, approaches and attitudes of the European Union towards the important events in the Middle East are discussed. The US occupation of Iraq and the EU's attitude towards this occupation, Iran's nuclear activities and its relations with the EU, and the crisis between Qatar and Saudi Arabia are also other issues focused on the study. Finally, in the name of the ''Arab Spring'', which took place in 2010 and which led to intense conflicts and civil wars in the Middle East, the process of Arab Spring, and the approaches and policies of the European Union and European countries to the region are also handled. Key Words: Middle East, Europe, European Union's Foreign Policy, European Union's Middle East Policy, Israel-Palestine Conflict, Arab Spring.