Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
elements and the army. After eighteen months of strikes and protest demonstrations,
Karamanlís resigned and went into voluntary exile in Paris.
George Papandréou and the colonels
New elections in 1964 gave the Centre Union Party , headed by George Papandréou , an
outright majority and a mandate for social and economic reform. The new government
was the first to be controlled from outside the right since 1935, and in his first act as
prime minister, Papandréou sought to heal the wounds of the civil war by releasing
political prisoners and allowing exiles to return. When King Paul died in March and
his son came to the throne as Constantine II , it seemed a new era had begun.
But soon Cyprus again took centre stage. Fighting between Turkish and Greek Cypriots
broke out in 1963, and only the intervention of the United States in 1964 dissuaded
Turkey from invading the island. In the mood of military confrontation between Greece
and Turkey - both NATO members - Papandréou questioned Greece's role in the
Western alliance, to the alarm of the Americans and the Greek right. When he moved to
purge the army of disloyal officers, the army, with the support of the king, resisted.
Amid growing tension, elections were set for May 1967. It was a foregone conclusion
that Papandréou's Centre Union Party would win, but King Constantine , disturbed by
the party's leftward shift, was said to have briefed senior generals for a coup. True or
not, the king, like almost everyone else in Greece, was caught by surprise when a group
of unknown colonels staged their own coup on April 21, 1967. In December the king
staged a counter-coup against the colonels, and when it failed he went into exile.
The junta announced itself as the “ Revival of Greek Orthodoxy against corrupting
Western influences, not least long hair and miniskirts. Political activity was banned,
independent trade unions were forbidden to recruit or meet, the press was so heavily
censored that many papers stopped printing, and thousands of communists and others on
the left were arrested, imprisoned and often tortured. Culturally, the colonels put an end
to popular music and inflicted ludicrous censorship on literature and the theatre, including
a ban on the production of classical tragedies. In 1973, chief colonel Papadópoulos
abolished the monarchy and declared Greece a republic with himself as president.
Restoration of democracy
The colonels lasted for seven years. Opposition was voiced from the start by exiled
Greeks in London, the US and Western Europe, but only in 1973 did demonstrations
break out openly in Greece - the colonels' secret police had done too thorough a job of
infiltrating domestic resistance groups and terrifying everyone else into docility. After
students occupied the Athens Polytechnic on November 17 , the ruling clique sent
armoured vehicles to storm the gates. A still-undetermined number of students
(estimates range from 20 to 300) were killed. Martial law was tightened and Colonel
Papadópoulos was replaced by the even more noxious and reactionary General
Ioannídes , head of the secret police.
The end came within a year when the dictatorship embarked on a disastrous
adventure in Cyprus . By attempting to topple the Makários government, the junta
provoked a Turkish invasion and occupation of forty percent of Cypriot territory. The
army finally mutinied and Constantine Karamanlís was invited to return from Paris to
resume office.
1974
1975
1981
1982
Greek-backed attempted coup in
Cyprus leads to Turkish invasion and
the division of the island; and to the
end of the colonels' regime.
New constitution provides
for parliamentary
government with president
as Head of State.
Greece joins
the EU.
The Rough Guide
to Greece , the first
ever Rough Guide,
published.
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search