European foreign policy of the Barack Obama administration signal to the Muslim world and firmly anchor the country in Europe. The trip marked Obama's first visit to a Muslim majority country. Obama has asserted that a close relationship with a stable, democratic, Western-oriented Republic of Turkey is an important U.S. national interest. His administration declared that the U.S. will support the promotion of democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression in Turkey and support its efforts to join the European Union, which the president confirmed on his April visit. While Obama has gone on the record in the past as referring to the massacre of Armenians under the
Presidency of Barack Obama fell substantially after the announcement of the new policy, As of 2015, US drone strikes had killed eight American citizens, one of whom, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was specifically targeted. The targeted killing of a United States citizen raised Constitutional issues, as it is the first known instance of a sitting U.S. president ordering the extrajudicial killing of a U.S. citizen. Obama had ordered the targeted killing of al-Aulaqi, a Muslim cleric with ties to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, after al-Aulaqi allegedly shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them. The Obama administration continually sought to