Egyptian foreign policy and The 'Arab spring': A Case study of Egyptian policy before and after Arab Spring toward Turkey and Palestine

The main focus of the dissertation is to examine the interactions between Egyptian foreign policy and the domestic, regional and international dramatic changes that shaped the environment in which that foreign policy was made and operated during the Arab Spring in Egypt from January 2011 to June 2013. The goal is to explore whether domestic, regional and international changes during the Arab Spring had resulted in a substantial change of Egyptian foreign policy in those three years regarding most foreign policy issues especially toward Turkey and Palestine. The dissertation's analysis, while rather qualitative and inductive in nature, employed the neoclassical realism as its theoretical framework. It allowed the researcher to identify major domestic players and issues such as ideology, strategic culture, political religion and the ability to mobilize national resources and study their impact on the foreign policy decision makers. The researcher concluded that the Egyptian foreign policy made several major changes during the Arab Spring especially toward Turkey and Palestine/Israel. These changes were due to domestic and regional variables more than to international systemic order's signals. Neoclassical realism proved to be ideal for the researcher's analysis. It helped him easily identify key...