Konstantinos G. Karamanlis
July 23, 1974, 50 years ago: After 7 years of a right-wing military dictatorship, democracy is restored to the birthplace of the concept, Greece.
On April 21, 1967, a group of colonels in the Greek Army overthrew the caretaker government, a month before scheduled elections which Georgios Papandreou's Centre Union party was favored to win. King Constantine II and his family fled to England, and the monarchy was never restored.
The military dictatorship was led by Georgios Papadopoulos, and was characterized by policies such as anti-communism, restrictions on civil liberties, and the imprisonment, torture and exile of political opponents. In other words, the kind of things the Greek people had fought so hard against in World War II, only a generation before. The coup is believed to have been heavily influenced by America's CIA, in a bid to ward off Communist influence, spilling over from neighboring Albania and Bulgaria.
As internal dissatisfaction grew in the early 1970s, and especially after an abortive coup by the Navy in early 1973, Papadopoulos attempted to legitimize the regime by beginning a gradual "democratization." On June 1, 1973, he formally abolished the monarchy, and declared Greece a republic, with himself as President. He was confirmed in office via a controversial referendum. He furthermore sought the support of the old political establishment, but secured only the cooperation of Spiro Markezinis, who became Prime Minister.
Concurrently, many restrictions were lifted, and the Army's role significantly reduced. An interim Constitution created a presidential republic, which vested sweeping, almost dictatorial, powers in the hands of the President. The decision to return to at least nominal civilian rule, and the restriction of the Army's role, was resented by many of the regime's supporters, whose dissatisfaction with Papadopoulos would become evident a few months later.
On November 14, 1973, students at the Athens Polytechnic University went on strike, and started protesting against the junta. An assembly formed spontaneously, and decided to occupy the Polytechnic. On the 15th, thousands of people from Athens poured in to support the students. On the 16th, the demonstrators proclaimed that the students were aiming to bring down the junta. During the afternoon, demonstrations and attacks against neighboring ministries took place. Central roads closed, fires erupted, and Molotov cocktails were thrown.
In the early hours of November 17, the transitional government sent a tank crashing through the gates of the Polytechnic. Soon after that, Prime Minister Markezinis asked President Papadopoulos to reimpose martial law.
An official investigation undertaken after the fall of the junta declared that no students of the Athens Polytechnic were killed during the incident. However, 24 civilians were killed outside the campus, including a 5-year-old boy caught in crossfire.
It was the end of the line for Papadopoulos: On November 25, he was overthrown by a hardliner, Dimitrios Ioannidis. This began a string of events that would culminate in the fall of the regime, sparked by Ioannidis' ill-advised invasion, on July 15, 1974, of the island nation of Cyprus, which inflamed tensions with neighboring Turkey, which invaded on July 20.
Ioannidis could not survive such a humiliation, and was pushed out by "The Coup of the Generals" on July 23. They invited Konstantinos Karamanlis, who had served as Prime Minister 3 times between 1955 and 1963, to return from exile, and end the military rule.
Papadopoulos was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to life imprisonment. He died in prison in 1999, at the age of 80. Ioannidis was sentenced to life, and died in prison in 2010, at 87. Karamanlis served as Prime Minister until the election of 1980, making him President, holding the office until his resignation in 1985. Despite being 81 years old, he was elected again in 1990, and retired again in 1995. He died in 1998, at 91. His nephew, Konstantinos A. "Kostas" Karamanlis, served as Prime Minister from 2004 to 2009.
King Constantine II, as his opponents reminded him, was not ethnically Greek. He was German and Danish. He was a grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and a great-grandson of both Queen Victoria of Britain and King Christian IX of Denmark -- which made him a 3rd cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, who allowed him and his family to settle in London after the 1967 coup.
He married another 3rd cousin, Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark. They were permitted to return to Greece in 2013, although there was no chance of the monarchy ever being legally restored. The King died in 2023. The former Queen is still alive. The current head of the royal family, the House of Glücksburg, is Crown Prince Pavlos, 57, who runs an investment firm in New York, and would be King Paul II in the incredibly unlikely event that the monarchy was restored.
He is a 4th cousin of King Charles III of Britain, at whose Coronation the photo above was taken; and a 1st cousin of King Felipe VI of Spain (who had been his roommate at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.) and King Frederik X of Denmark.
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