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The Greek military junta of 1967-1974 or alternatively called "The Regime of the Colonels" or in Greece "The Junta" is a collective term to refer to a series of military regimes that ruled modern Greece during 1967-1974.
This series of military regimes started in the morning of April 21, 1974 with a coup d'etat lead by a group of colonels of the military of Greece and ended in August, 1974.
Before the Junta
After the Nazi occupation (1941-1945) Greece got entangled in a full scale civil war. The results of the civil war were, among others, the allegiance of Greece to the western powers, the outlawing of the Communist Party of Greece, and the creation of an unstable constitutional monarchy. At the beginning of the sixties public support for the lawful "United Democratic Left" party, EDA (ΕΔΑ) begun to create in extreme right wing circles the feeling that a "Communist threat" was growing. This eventualy lead to the assasination of EDA's member of parliament, Gregoris Lambrakis.
This sense of a "Communist threat" along with a traditionalist right wing nationalistic ideology in the military of Greece eventualy led to the coup d'etat of April 21.
The coup d'etat of April 21
On April 21, 1967, just before scheduled elections which polls showed EDA was sure to win, a group of right-wing colonels led by Colonel George Papadopoulos seized power in a coup d'état. Civil liberties were suppressed, special military courts were established, and political parties were dissolved. Several thousand suspected communists and political opponents were imprisoned or exiled to remote Greek islands. "The junta" was given at least tacit support by the United States as a Cold War ally, due to its proximity to the Eastern European Soviet bloc, and the fact that the previous Truman administration had given the country millions of dollars in economic aid to discourage Communism. U.S. support for Papadopoulos is claimed to be the cause of rising anti-Americanism in Greece during and following the junta's harsh rule.
Downfall of the Junta
On November 25, 1973, following the bloody suppresion of Athens Polytechnic uprising on the 17th of November, General Dimitrios Ioannides replaced Papadopoulos and tried to continue the dictatorship despite the popular unrest the uprising had triggered. Ioannides' attempt in July 1974 to overthrow Archbishop Makarios, the President of Cyprus, brought Greece to the brink of war with Turkey, which invaded Cyprus and occupied part of the island. Senior Greek military officers then withdrew their support from the junta, which toppled.
Restoration of democracy
Leading citizens persuaded Karamanlis to return from exile in France to establish a government of national unity until elections could be held. Karamanlis' newly organized party, New Democracy (ND), won elections held in November 1974, and he became prime minister. The cause of the downfall of the dictatorship formally was the invasion by Turkey of Cyprus, which was seen as a military and political failure of the junta; however, since then, historians and other people have regarded the uprising at the Polytechnic University (Greek: Η εξέγερση του Πολυτεχνείου) as the event that most discredited the military government.
Characteristics of the Junta
The dictators never refered to them as such. They preferred to call the coup d'etat of April 21 a "revolution".The ideology of the Junta was a mixture of Nationalism, Militarism, Fascism and Fundamentalism.
See Also
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