Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
would become an independent republic the following August, with Greek Cypriot Arch-
bishop Makarios as president and a Turk, Faisal Kükük, as vice president. The changes
did little to appease either side. EOKA resolved to keep fighting, while Turkish Cypriots
clamoured for partition of the island.
Back in Greece, Georgios Papandreou, a former Venizelos supporter, founded the
broadly based Centre Union (EK) in 1958, but elections in 1961 returned the National
Radical Union (ERE), Karamanlis' new name for Greek Rally, to power for the third
time in succession. Papandreou accused the ERE of ballot rigging, and the political tur-
moil that followed culminated in the murder, in May 1963, of Grigoris Lambrakis, the
deputy of the communist Union of the Democratic Left (EDA). All this proved too much
for Karamanlis, who resigned and went to live in Paris.
The EK finally came to power in February 1964 and Papandreou wasted no time in
implementing a series of radical changes. He freed political prisoners and allowed exiles
to come back to Greece, reduced income tax and the defence budget, and increased
spending on social services and education.
The 1963 political assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis is described in Vassilis Vassilikos'
novel
Z,
which later became an award-winning film.
Colonels, Monarchs & Democracy
The political right in Greece was rattled by Papandreou's tolerance of the left, and a
group of army colonels, led by Georgios Papadopoulos and Stylianos Patakos, staged a
coup on 21 April 1967. They established a military junta with Papadopoulos as prime
minister. King Constantine tried an unsuccessful counter-coup in December, after which
he fled to Rome, then London.
The colonels declared martial law, banned political parties and trade unions, imposed
censorship and imprisoned, tortured and exiled thousands of dissidents. In June 1972
Papadopoulos declared Greece a republic and appointed himself president.
On 17 November 1973 tanks stormed a building at the Athens Polytechnio (Technical
University) to quell a student occupation calling for an uprising against the US-backed
junta. While the number of casualties is still in dispute (more than 20 students were re-
portedly killed and hundreds injured), the act spelt the death knell for the junta.
Shortly after, the head of the military security police, Dimitrios Ioannidis, deposed
Papadopoulos. In July 1974 Ioannidis tried to impose unity with Cyprus by attempting to
topple the Makarios government in Cyprus; Makarios got wind of an assassination at-
tempt and escaped. The junta replaced him with the extremist Nikos Sampson (a former
