In July [1967] the septuagenarian [George] Papandreou asked the twenty-five-year-old King Constantine II, who had succeeded his father King Paul in March 1964, to dismiss [defence minister, Petros] Garoufalias, and to agree to his taking over as minister of defence. The king refused, it being argued that it would be improper for George Papandreou to head the defence ministry when his own son, Andreas, was under investigation for his alleged involvement in the Aspida conspiracy. Acting within the letter of the constitution but against its spirit the young king manoeuvred Papandreou into resigning on 13 July 1965, thus sparking off a political crisis of major proportions.

To the accompaniment of massive demonstrations by Papandreou's supporters protesting against a 'royal coup d'etat', the king's strategy was to try to split the Centre Union by attempting to form a minority government from within its ranks. The first aspirant to succeed Papandreou, however, George Athanassiadis Novas, the speaker of parliament, failed to attract more than a handful of detectors from the Centre Union, and was thus unable to win a vote of confidence. A second attempt by Elias Tsirimokos, a one-time leading member of EAM and a member of the left wing of the Centre Union, similarly failed. Finally, in September, Stephanos Stephanopoulos, a right wing member of the Centre Union, at the head of 45 Centre Union 'apostates', as they came to be known, was able narrowly to scrape the necessary vote of confidence, thanks to the support in parliament of ERE and Markezinis' Progressives. Some of the (apostates were rewarded with ministerial office, and there were rumours of bribery on the part of the Palace and the American Embassy.

The narrowness of its parliamentary majority of only two seats inhibited any decisive measures by the Stephanopoulos government. In parliament and out, Papandreou, relishing to the full this renewal of the (relentless struggle", harried the government, against a background of continuous and large-scale demonstrations. The principal demand of Papandreou's supporters was for new elections, and a favourite slogan "Ena ena tessara', or 114, a reference to the article of the 1952 constitution entrusting its maintenance to the patriotism of the Greek people. But although demonstrations and strikes abounded, the high rate of economic growth of the early sixties, with the economy expanding at a rate of about 6 per cent a year, was maintained, and for all the passionate emotions engendered by the crisis there was remarkably little political violence. Moreover, there were signs of a possible way out of the political impasse when in December 1966 Papandreou and Kanellopoulos, the leader of ERE, reached an agreement to hold elections on 28 May 1967. These were to be overseen by a non-political caretaker government, headed by the banker John Paraskevopoulos.

The election campaign was characterised by two major developments, both involving Andreas Papandreou. The younger Papandreou had become the focus of a group of radically inclined Centre Union deputies who suspected that George Papandreou's understanding with Kanellopoulos included a secret undertaking not to make the monarchy an election issue. It was also rumoured that Papandreou had promised not to disturb the existing command structure of the army. For a time it looked as though Andreas Papandreou's group might split from the Centre Union. Father and son, however, were reconciled, but no sooner had their quarrel been patched up than Andreas became the centre of renewed controversy. In mid-March fifteen officers charged in the Aspida affair were convicted and the public prosecutor sought to have Andreas Papandreou's parliamentary immunity lifted so that he could be charged, along with other civilians alleged to be involved.

The Centre Union was in a quandary, for under existing law, even if the prosecutor's request were refused, Papandreou's immunity would automatically lapse with the dissolution of parliament at the start of the election campaign. Faced with the prospect of Andreas Papandreou spending the election campaign under arrest, the Centre Union tabled a law extending parliamentary immunity for the duration of the election campaign. This was too much for the hard-liners of ERE and the Paraskevopoulos caretaker government resigned early in April. Going against established convention, King Constantine did not appoint another caretaker government but asked Kanellopoulos, the leader of ERE, to form a government and oversee the forthcoming elections. Papandreou made a token protest but it was clear that he did not seriously doubt that Kanellopoulos would hold fair elections. It subsequently emerged, however, that a group of senior generals, in consultation with the king, had been secretly making contingency plans for the army to intervene if disorder were to follow the widely predicted Centre Union victory at the polls.

Moreover, unknown to their seniors, a group of relatively junior officers had been making their own plans. At 2 a.m. on the morning of 21 April 1967, they struck, catching the king, the politicians and the senior echelons of the armed forces alike off balance. Using a NATO contingency plan prepared for the event of serious internal disorders, and code-named 'Prometheus', the conspirators executed their putsch with exemplary efficiency and virtually no bloodshed, meeting with very little resistance. Later in the morning of the 21 April a decree, purportedly signed by the king and his government, was issued proclaiming martial law. Various articles in the 1952 constitution guaranteeing human rights were suspended, special courts martial were set up, political parties were dissolved and the right to strike abolished. Many thousands of people with a record of left wing political views or activity were rounded up and sent into exile in bleak camps on the islands. In the course of the day the creation of a nondescript civilian government headed by a supreme court prosecutor, Constantine Kollias, was announced. In a statement broadcast in the evening Kollias roundly attacked the politicians for failing the nation, promised social justice and declared that from now on there were no rightists, centrists or leftists, >only Greeks who believe in Greece'.

It soon became apparent, however, that the new civilian prime minister was a mere facade and that real power lay in the hands of a triumvirate of relatively junior officers, Colonels George Papadopoulos and Nicholas Makarezos, both of whom had backgrounds in intelligence, and Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos, who were backed up by a shadowy Revolutionary Council. Papadopoulos took charge of the key ministry to the prime minister, which controlled the media. Pattakos became minister of the interior and Makarezos took over the important economic ministry of co-ordination. The 'Colonels', as the military junta came to be known; justified their coup by the need to forestall an imminent communist take-over. But no evidence was ever produced to substantiate this claim, which was in time dropped by the Colonels themselves. The real motive of the conspirators was undoubtedly the fear that a Centre Union victory in the elections scheduled for May would have been followed by a purge of officers of known ultra right wing views. Colonel Papadopoulos, as a leading functionary of KYP, the Greek CIA, and the man behind the >communist sabotage' scare of 1965, would have been an obvious candidate for early retirement, as would have been many of his fellow conspirators.

Another likely cause of military disaffection, although one that was for obvious reasons seldom explicitly articulated, was the feeling of many officers that they had been passed by in the consumer boom of the 1960s. At the time of the coup a Greek general was paid less than a sergeant in the American army. For the most part men of peasant or lower-middle-class origin, they resented the elaborate intrigues played out by the politicians, a tightly knit and to some extent hereditary caste, in the urban affluence of Athens, while they sweated it out in the border regions or the stifling boredom of Greek provincial towns. Certainly the military, on achieving power, lost little time in securing a greater share for itself of the country's growing prosperity. Indeed, the new life-style of some of the military rulers attracted the scorn of those members of the regime, sincere ifblinkered, who genuinely believed that they had a mission to preserve the traditional values of Greek society against alien Western and secular influences. The early ban, rapidly rescinded in the interests of Greece's vital tourist trade, against the entry into the country of hirsute or mini-skirted foreigners was but one example of this strain in the Colonels' thinking.

Although King Constantine had not signed the decree establishing martial law which had been issued in his name, he rejected the urgings of his last constitutional prime minister to resist the conspirators. Kanellopoulos himself, with a number of other prominent political figures, was placed under house arrest. Instead, the king grudgingly acquiesced in the establishment of the dictatorship, apparently hoping to exert a moderating influence. This decision eased the dilemma of Greece's Western allies, who had expressed varying degrees of disapproval of the new regime, over the question of diplomatic recognition, for it was argued that their ambassadors were accredited to the king rather than to any particular government. For several months the king refused to sign decrees retiring officers in all three services known for their loyalty to the crown, but in September, after a visit to the United States during which he made his distaste for the regime clear, he succumbed to the Colonels' pressure and substantial numbers of royalist officers were compulsorily retired.

There remained, however, elements in the armed forces that were loyal to the crown and these played a key part in the king's plans for a counter-coup aimed at dislodging the Colonels before they became too firmly entrenched in power. This was launched on 13 December 1967, but was organised in such a slip-shod manner that it had little chance of success. Indeed, there is some evidence that the regime knew in advance of the king's amateurish plans and was thus able to plan effective counter-measures. King Constantine launched his bid to oust the Colonels with a proclamation urging their overthrow. This, however, was little heard as it was broadcast on a short-wave transmitter in Larisa rather than on the national network. Meanwhile the king had flown to Kavalla, where he planned to link up with loyal elements of the Third Army Corps stationed in northern Greece. When it became clear, however, that his coup could only succeed if he were prepared to countenance bloodshed, the king flew to Rome with his family and prime minister Kollias, and the counter-coup rapidly collapsed. The abortive counter-coup was followed by further purges in the armed forces of those supposedly implicated or thought still to harbour royalist sympathies. It is estimated that in 1967-8 approximately one sixth of the officer corps was compulsorily retired. Besides removing those whose loyalty to the regime was in doubt, the purges also served to loosen the promotion bottle-necks within the armed forces which had been a longstanding source of professional grievance to officers. Those who owed their promotion to the regime naturally had a vested interest in its longevity.

With the collapse of the king's counter-coup, the Colonels now felt confident enough to cast off the facade of civilian government. General Zoitakis became regent and Papadopoulos, who had increasingly emerged as the strong man of the regime, became prime minister. In a process of gradually concentrating power in his own person he subsequently assumed the offices of minister of foreign affairs, minister of defence, minister to the prime minister, minister of education, minister of government policy and, from March 1972, regent, a position he combined with the premiership. With the removal of the last restraints to their absolute power the Colonels made it clear that they were settling down for a long stay in office. In this respect their regime differed significantly from Greece's pre-war military interventions. These had usually been of short duration, with their protagonists intervening on behalf of individual politicians or political parties, and stepping down from power once their immediate political objectives had been secured. The Colonels, by contrast, heaped abuse on politicians of all shades of the political spectrum, and it is not surprising that only a handful of the pre-coup politicians in turn were prepared in any way to co-operate with them.

Civil servants, school and university teachers, whose allegiance was in doubt, were dismissed, while others were required to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime or risk forfeiting their jobs. Lawyers and judges who showed too much independence were harassed and dismissed. George Papandreou's educational reforms were systematically dismantled, school textbooks were rewritten, and entry to higher education made dependent on political tests. Through press censorship and the regime's control of broadcasting the Greek people were subjected to an endless barrage of propaganda in favour of 'The Revolution of 21 April 1967', as the coup was now officially known. To justify their continued grip on power the Colonels sought to give their regime an ideological basis. Like the pre-war dictator General Metaxas, they placed much emphasis on the need to discipline the Greek character. Stressing their own humble social origins, they sought to project a populist image, claiming to have the interests of Greek workers and peasants particularly at heart. Much emphasis was laid in the regime's propaganda on the notion of >Helleno-Christian Civilisation', that attempt to reconcile the essentially contradictory values of ancient Greece and Christian Byzantium, which had long been the ideological catchword of the far right.

In a further effort to consolidate its power, the regime, after a perfunctory attempt at public consultation, organised a referendum in September 1968 on a new constitution to replace that of 1952. Given the regime's control over the media and the fact that martial law was still in force it is not surprising that there was a 92 per cent vote in favour (4,638,543 for, 391,923 against). The constitution was a highly authoritarian document, which sought to give the military a permanent voice in the government of the country. The armed forces themselves acquired absolute control over promotions, retirements, assignments and transfers and the minister of defence was reduced to a mere figurehead. The role of the armed forces was stated as being the safeguarding of the independence and territorial integrity of the country together with the existing political and social order. The articles relating to individual rights were hedged about with qualifications. 'Political strikes, for instance, were forbidden, and a number of the most important articles were in any case held in abeyance.

The fact that the plebiscite was held under martial law indicated that the regime, despite its protestations to the contrary, was uncertain as to its popularity. The Colonels had met with little opposition at the time of the coup and the initial reaction of the bulk of the Greek people was one of impotent resignation occasioned by the inability of the politicians to reconcile their differences during the previous eighteen months. This mood of acquiescence was soon transformed into one in which resentment was combined with shame at a regime that combined brutality with incompetence. When the veteran centre politician George Papandreou died, aged eighty, in November 1968, his funeral, at which his old friend and political rival Panayiotis Kanellopoulos delivered a moving oration, became a gesture of protest against the regime on the part of the several hundred thousand mourners who attended it. Yet although the regime was undoubtedly unpopular and did not dare submit to the test of free elections, there was relatively little in the way of active opposition. A number of resistance groups came into being, among them the Patriotic Front (PAM), Democratic Defence (DA) and the Free Greeks, but the security police had little difficulty in breaking up these groups, whose leaders were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, mostly under Law 509. This dated from 1947 and provided for severe penalties for attempts to overthrow the existing social order.

The efficiency and brutality of the security (Asphaleia) and military (ESA) police in breaking up attempts to organise active resistance served to impede the development of any mass-based opposition. Rumours soon began to leak out of the extremely harsh treatment meted out to the regime's opponents. Alexander Panagoulis, a former activist in the Centre Union youth movement, who, in August 1968, attempted to blow up the car in which Papadopoulos was travelling from his seaside retreat, was the object of particularly brutal treatment, although the death sentence imposed on him was commuted to life imprisonment after world-wide pleas for clemency. By and large it was the unknown opponents of the regime, and in particular students, who suffered most at the hands of the police. Those such as Andreas Papandreou, the composer Mikis Theodorakis, and Lady Amalia Fleming, who were all known abroad, were more leniently treated and expelled from the country. There they were active with many other emigres, such as the newspaper publisher Helen Vlachou, in organising a highly effective propaganda campaign against the Colonels.

Partly as a result of the activities of exiled opponents of the regime, partly as a result of a continuous stream, of allegations of inhuman treatment emanating from within Greece, the governments of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Holland lodged complaints with the Council of Europe, of which Greece was a member. The European Commission of Human Rights produced in 1969 a massively documented report in which it found that in April 1967 there had been no emergency threatening the life of the nation which would have justified Greece derogating from the European Convention of Human Rights, and that there had indeed been torture and degrading treatment of the regime's opponents. This was holly contested by the regime, but nonetheless in December 1969 the foreign minister, Panayiotis Pipinelis, withdrew Greece from the Council of Europe on the eve of a meeting of the Council of Ministers at which Greece would almost certainly have been expelled. But although many members of the Council of Europe were also Greece's partners in NATO and members of the EEC, with which Greece had an association agreement, these two bodies were far less forthright in their criticism than the Council of Europe.

The Colonels' regime was always careful to fulfil its obligations under the NATO alliance, and although from time to time certain member countries, in particular Norway, Denmark and Holland, sought to raise the question of the Greek dictatorship, American influence was always sufficiently strong to ensure that Greece came under no real pressure from her NATO allies, beyond the expression of pious hopes for an eventual return to democratic rule. The EEC also from time to time criticised the lack of democratic freedoms in Greece but its claim to have >frozen= Greece's 1962 treaty of association did not have such serious implications for Greece as the term suggested. The removal of tariff barriers and customs duties continued on schedule and negotiations were entered into to harmonise Greek agricultural policies with those of the Community, a development scarcely compatible with a >freeze= in relations.

The regime's main external prop was undoubtedly the United States. Although many Greeks of all political persuasions believed that the American CIA had somehow been directly involved in the 1967 coup, there was little evidence to substantiate this. But if the American administration was not involved in the actual establishment of the dictatorship it nonetheless did afford the regime a very considerable degree of aid and comfort. Although in theory shipments of heavy weapons were cut off between 1967 and 1970, America remained the major supplier of military equipment to the junta. The Pentagon was particularly anxious to maintain good relations with Greece so as to continue to enjoy base facilities in a country whose strategic importance to the Western alliance had increased following the Arab/Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 and the rapid build-up of a Soviet naval presence in the Mediterranean. This last development prompted the negotiation in 1972 of the 'Home Port' agreement, which provided permanent port facilities for the Sixth Fleet in Greece. When the United States congress voted to cut off military aid to Greece, President Nixon was quick to take advantage of the provision that such aid could be resumed if he considered this to be essential to United States defence interests. In January 1972 he declared that the defence of Israel, a primary objective of American policy in the eastern Mediterranean, was predicated on friendly relations with Greece. As a further mark of American consideration for the regime, vice- president Spiro Agnew (born Anagnostopoulos), himself of Greek origin, visited Greece in 1971. Other influential American visitors included General Andrew Goodpaster, the commander of NATO forces in Europe, who smilingly posed alongside Papadopoulos in the summer of 1967, the secretaries of defence, Melvin Laird, and of commerce, Maurice Stans. During a visit to Athens in 1971, Stans spoke of his having been asked by President Nixon to convey his >warm love= to the Greek government. This remark was subsequently 'clarified' by the American Embassy to 'warmth and confidence'.

In return for American support the regime was careful to avoid giving offence to its NATO allies, particularly after the regime had suffered humiliation over Cyprus at the hands of the Turks a few months after the seizure of power. Greco-Turkish talks at the border towns of Keshan and Alexandroupolis in September I967 had ended without result due to the diplomatic inadequacies of the Greek delegation, which was led by Papadopoulos, and which had openly sought enosis. Greece suffered further humiliation two months later in November, after Grivas had launched a bloody attack on two Turkish Cypriot villages. Following mediation by President Johnson's representative, Cyrus Vance, agreement was reached that Greek and Turkish regular forces on the island in excess of the quotas of 950 and 650 respectively laid down in the Zurich and London agreements should be withdrawn. Some 10,000 Greek troops, who had been infiltrated into the island since the breakdown of the constitution in 1963, were withdrawn to the mainland, as was Grivas, who had been sent back to the island by George Papandreou in 1064.. Relations between Athens and Nicosia were never to recover from this humiliation. In 1968 intercommunal talks between Glafkos Clerides, the speaker of the Cyprus House of Representatives, for the Greek Cypriots and Rauf Denktash, for the Turkish Cypriots, were initiated under the aegis of the United Nations Secretary General. They dragged on for several years without producing any solution to the constitutional problem on the island; meanwhile a substantial proportion of the Turkish population continued to be concentrated in enclaves.

Somewhat paradoxically, given the regime's fiercely anti-communist stance in domestic matters, Greece's relations with her communist neighbours underwent a significant improvement. President Ceausescu of Romania was the only European head of state to plan an official visit to Greece, while in 1971 Greece and Albania exchanged ambassadors, thus ending a technical state of war that had existed between the two countries for a generation. In renewing diplomatic relations with Albania, Greece appeared to shelve indefinitely her long-standing claim to Northern Epirus. There were few official visitors of any significance from the countries of Western Europe, nor were the Colonels welcomed in Western capitals. Instead a stream of minor African dignitaries joined the existing stream of official American visitors to Greece, and Greek leaders in turn visited some African countries, a development that was grandiosely entitled an 'opening' to Africa.

Although the Colonels' propaganda was replete with populist rhetoric their actual economic and financial policies were the antithesis of populist, and inequalities in the distribution of in- come grew steadily. Indeed, so grateful were Greece's shipowners for the concessions they were granted, in an effort to persuade them to register their ships under the Greek flag rather than under flags of convenience, that in March 1972 they elected Papadopoulos president for life of the Association of Greek Shipowners. In an effort to attract much-needed foreign capital measures were taken to strengthen still further the guarantees given to foreign investors in the legislation of 1953, and a number of contracts were signed conceding highly advantageous terms to foreign companies. One such, signed amidst much publicity soon after the 1967 coup, with Litton Industries, envisaged very substantial investment in Greece, but very little of this actually materialised before the contract was terminated. Some of the contracts awarded by the regime were on highly dubious terms and it subsequently emerged that, for all the public denunciations of the corruption of the old politicians, some members of the regime, at least, were unable to resist the temptation to line their own and their families' pockets with public money. However, although the long-term consequences of the Colonels' economic policies were highly damaging, nonetheless, thanks to continued expansion in the field of tourism, to the continued inflow of remittances from seamen, migrant workers and emigrants, and to an agile, if injudicious, policy of borrowing, the regime was for a number of years able to maintain the high rate of economic growth of the late fifties and early sixties. Even though there were glaring inequalities in the distribution of this growing prosperity, overall living standards continued to rise.

The fact that many Greeks were prospering in the early years of the Colonels' dictatorship was undoubtedly a factor impeding the development of any mass-based opposition. It is perhaps no accident that: it was in 1973, when the Colonels were beginning to pay the price for their profligate economic policies in the form of a rate of inflation of over 30 per cent, that the first rumblings of mass discontent began to be heard. The lead in open opposition to the regime was taken by university students whose initially professional grievances increasingly took on a political colouring. The occupation of the Law Faculty of Athens University in March , 1973 and its brutal suppression served to intensify student militancy, as did a law giving the regime the power to revoke the deferment from military service of those students who wilfully absented themselves from lectures.

A more serious threat to the regime's stability, however, was an abortive naval mutiny at the end of May 1973 and the defection of the destroyer Velos to Greece's NATO ally Italy. This was subsequently revealed to have had wide ramifications in the navy and indicated that, even after repeated purges, there was still widespread disaffection in the officer corps. Papadopoulos, now regent as well as prime minister, claimed that King Constantine had been implicated in the plot from his exile in Rome, and on 1 June declared him deposed. He proclaimed the creation of a 'presidential parliamentary republic= to be ratified by referendum, and promised to hold elections in the following year, 1974. The president was to be elected for an eight-year term and was to enjoy wide legislative and executive powers, with exclusive control over sensitive issues such as foreign affairs, defence, national security and public order. Papadopoulos' critics denounced the July referendum as a sham, pointing out that martial law remained in force in Athens and Piraeus. Although Papadopoulos was the only candidate for the presidency and there was a massive barrage of publicity urging a 'yes' vote, nonetheless some former politicians grouped in the Committee of Parliamentarians for the Restoration of Democratic Legality, and some newspapers urged a 'no= vote. Not surprisingly in the circumstances, Papadopoulos was elected president with a 78 per cent 'yes' vote, with 3,843,318 in favour, 1,048,308 against.

When he was formally sworn in on 19 August, Papadopoulos restated his intention to hold elections, overseen by a civilian government. To prepare the way for these, he lifted martial law where it remained in force and declared a sweeping amnesty for political prisoners, including his own would-be assassin, Alexander Panagoulis. Papadopoulos' choice as prime minister was Spyros Markezinis, the leader of the small pre-coup Progressive Party, who experienced difficulty in convincing other politicians and the Greek people at large of his intention to hold >impeccable= elections. Moreover Greece's university students soon made it clear that they were not prepared to tolerate a move towards a type of "guided' democracy, in which real power would still be held by Papadopoulos and the army. Early in November a memorial service for George Papandreou was followed by violent clashes with the police. Some days later students occupied the Athens Polytechnic and university buildings in Salonica and Patras. At first the police adopted noticeably moderate tactics in dealing with the sit-ins. But when it was clear that the students were attracting widespread sympathy, and when the Athens Polytechnic students began broadcasting appeals on a clandestine radio for a worker-student alliance to overthrow the dictatorship, Papadopoulos sent in troops and tanks to crush the students.

The eviction of the students from the Athens Polytechnic was carried out with extreme brutality, and at least 34 students and others were killed, several hundred wounded and almost a thousand arrested. This ruthless demonstration of force in the centre of Athens caused widespread revulsion. Martial law was reimposed and Papadopoulos declared his intention of proceeding with the planned elections. Within a matter of days, however, he was deposed, on 25 November 1973, in a bloodless coup mounted by the army, with the support of naval and air force units. His successors justified their counter-coup on the ground that he had deviated from the principles of the 'Revolution of 21 April 1967' and was leading the country towards an electoral adventure. Lieutenant-General Phaedon Gizikis was installed as president and a new civilian government, headed by Adamantios Androutsopoulos, was formed. It was clear from the outset that real power in the new regime lay in the hands of the prime mover of the coup, Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis, the commander of the military police (ESA), which had acquired a fearsome reputation for its brutality towards the regime's opponents.

The new regime shelved itself quite incapable of dealing with the pressing problems confronting the country. Even harsher measures were employed against dissidents. Inflation continued unchecked, and Greece, with few indigenous sources of energy, was particularly severely affected by the oil crisis that followed the Yom Kippur war. The discovery in 1973 of oil off the island of Thasos highlighted the problem of the delineation of the continental shelves, and consequent rights to prospect for minerals, of Greece and Turkey in the Aegean. Turkey rejected Greece's claim that the Greek islands off her Aegean coast generated their own continental shelves, and granted licences to survey in waters over which Greece claimed jurisdiction. This provoked a display of sabre rattling by the Ioannidis regime in April and May 1974 and briefly raised the prospect of armed confrontation with Turkey. The loannidis regime also adopted an increasingly aggressive line towards President Makarios, a move that provoked the resignation of the Greek foreign minister. This open hostility was the culmination of several years of grooving tension between Athens, the >National Centre', and Nicosia. The junta had been implicated in a number of assassination attempts all of which Makarios had miraculously survived.

Relations between Cyprus and Greece reached an unprecedented level of tension when on 6 July Archbishop Makarios publicly claimed to have irrefutable evidence of a link between mainland Greek officers of the Cyprus National Guard and the EOKA-B terrorist organisation. The latter had been revived following Grivas' clandestine return to the island in 1971, and its agitation for enosis ad continued after his death in January 1974. Makarios charged that the Athens regime was seeking to destroy the Cyprus state. His demand for the removal of almost all the Greek officers of the National Guard was followed by ten days of mounting tension between Nicosia and Athens. This culminated on 15 July in the launching of a coup against Makarios by the National Guard. The Greek army contingent on the island joined in the attack on Makarios' supporters and it was abundantly clear that the coup had been inspired from. Athens. Although his supporters were soon overwhelmed. Archbishop Makarios was able to escape from his palace and was later flown off the island in a British plane from the Akrotiri base. Nikos Sampson, a former EOKA gunman, was installed as president in his place.

Turkey began to mass troops on the mainland opposite Cyprus and the Turkish prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, Hew to London to urge joint action to restore the status quo by the Turkish and British governments, as guarantors with Greece of the 1960 constitution. When it became clear that the British government was not prepared to fulfil its obligations, Turkey decided to exercise its right of intervention unilaterally, and in the early hours of 20 July landed troops in the Kyrenia region of northern Cyprus. Both Greece and Turkey mobilised and for a time there was a threat of outright war between the two countries. The Greek mobilisation proved to be a chaotic shambles and Greece's military commanders refused to carry out Ioannidis' orders to retaliate against Turkey. The seventy-two hours following the Turkish invasion revealed the almost total isolation of the regime in the international community. The dictatorship, which had hitherto exercised a very tight grip on the country, began to dissolve, the nominal civilian government having already faded into oblivion. General Davos, the commander of the powerful Third Army Corps stationed in northern Greece, issued, in the name of many of his officers, an ultimatum to President Gizikis demanding a return to civilian rule. Gizikis, in a rapidly deteriorating situation, called a meeting of military leaders and senior former politicians on 23 July. From this emerged a summons to the 67-year-old Constantine Karamanlis to return from his eleven-year self-exile in Paris to oversee the dismantling of the dictatorship and a return to democratic rule. Karamanlis arrived in Greece in the early hours of 24 July to a delirious welcome. Seven years of a brutal, inefficient and unpopular dictatorship had ended as abruptly as it had begun.

From A Short History of Modern Greece, by Richard Clogg (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp 185-199.

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