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COPYRIGHT 2000 Professors World Peace Academy
In July 1974 democracy was restored in Greece. Even though ancient Greece is the birthplace of democracy, the history of modern Greece, has been characterized by instability.
The paper is divided into three parts. The first considers the post-WWII environment and how it led to the overthrow of the civilian government by the military in 1967.
The second part examines the reasons for the inability of the military regime to achieve legitimacy, the disintegration of the military dictatorship during the early 1970s.
The third part examines how Karamanlis, and changes in the domestic and the international environments facilitated the transition toward and the consolidation of democracy in Greece.
In July 1974 the military government of Greece collapsed and democracy returned. Even though ancient Greece is the birthplace of democracy, the history of modern Greece, beginning in 1821 with the onset of the Greek war for independence against the Ottomans, has been characterized by instability. "This instability has taken Greece through various forms of dictatorship and democracy." [1] It has also caused many divisions and many deaths, especially during the Ethnikos Dikhasmos or National Schism during World War I, the National Catastrophe of 1922, and the Civil War of 1946-1949. Despite past experiences and many obstacles, Greek democracy has survived since the fall of the junta in 1974. The lack of legitimacy of the dictatorship, as well as changes in the domestic and the international environments, made the transition toward and the consolidation of democracy possible in Greece.
To better understand the reasons for the transformation in Greece one must begin with the end of World War II. For decades after 1945 the politics of Greece "were largely outer-directed: external factors played a major role in affecting her security and stability." [2] Greece found itself dependent upon the United States for financial and military support and the United States became extensively involved in the affairs of Greece in order to promote its strategic interests in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. The end of World War II coincided with the beginning of the Greek Civil War of 1946-1949, the protagonists of which were the pro-Western government in Athens and the communists.
The war of independence in the early nineteenth century and the National Schism during World War I caused important cleavages in Greek society. These divisions could not, however, compare with the savagery of the Civil War which prolonged the agonies of the World War II occupation. The old conflict had been between Venizelists and anti-Venizelists, generally speaking between republicans and monarchists. But now this conflict was enhanced by an even more important division, that between communists and anticommunists. [3] The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan significantly helped the government to defeat the communists whose supporters, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, eventually discontinued their assistance.
The Civil War was costly not only in terms of people and money but also because it delayed reconstruction after the end of World War II. The outcome of the war involving Greeks against Greeks was high inflation, serious economic depression, and a cost of living that was so high that 1.5 million people were near starvation. At the end of the Civil War, the Greek government was directly assisting about 34 percent of the population through the military, government employment, pensions, and refugee relief. [4] "Perhaps more important in the long term, the military as an institution acquired the position of national savior and remained a major drain on the national budget (with military and security personnel numbering nearly 250,000) as well as a significant political player. Even more important, the defeat of the communists also meant that the moderate left lost its opportunity to be a legitimate participant in parliamentary politics. The possibility of forming a political party with a mass base and a modern ag enda was delayed for a generation." [5] With peace re-established, the people of Greece and the ruling class wished for tranquillity and political stability. New elections were called for April 1950, but what followed was not political stability but a nightmare due to the number of governments formed in the next two years. 1952 marked the beginning of a new era in Greek politics characterized by a stability unparalleled since the beginning of the Modern Greek State. Between 1952 and 1963, Greece had only two Prime Ministers (Field Marshal Papagos and Constantine Karamanlis), in contrast to the pre-1952 period when half a dozen governments a year was not unusual. The government was in the hands of the Conservative Party. In addition, when the conservative government fell in 1963, it was replaced in power after a constitutionally conducted election by another party--a rare occurrence in Europe, outside of Great Britain, since 1945. [6] Even though the traditional political parties of Greece emerged intact from the Civil War, it was the Right which was the beneficiary of the defeat of the Left because of the "outlawing of the Communist party of Greece, the polarization of the electorate and, above all, the emergency legislation which lay the foundations for the paraconstitution and the institutionalization of the anti-Communist state in Greece...." [7] Anticommunism became the ideology of powerful ruling groups, [8] and arrangements were made to neutralize the Left and to ensure the political dominance of the Right.
During these years of stability Greece became a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and eventually (by a treaty of association) the European Economic Community. The relative tranquillity of Greek political life was shaken by uneven economic development, the renewal of violence in Cyprus (especially in 1964), and the crisis in defense policy which caused the collapse of the government and shook the monarchy in 1965. [10] In the 1950s Greece chose the path of full integration into the international economic community and subsequent rapid growth. Despite impressive economic development (the average rate of growth was about 6 percent), there were serious structural problems. The social dislocation caused by rapid growth exacerbated inequalities within the industrial labor force and the lower middle class. The resulting discontent became evident during the 1950s, but it took center stage in the early 1960s as demonstrated by the electoral victories o f the Center Union party in 1963 and 1964. The victory of the centrist forces signified that the exclusivist and repressive political system in Greece had to change. Changes, however, were bound to effect the balance of power among the major players within the political system. "Either parliament, through its opening up to the masses, had to become the dominant force in this [throne, armed forces, Parliament] triarchy, in which case the army would lose its leading position with inevitable internal consequences for those holding posts within it; or else, the army had to prevent this by the overall abolition of parliamentary rule." [11] The latter is what did happen.
The 1964 Cyprus crisis was a consequence of the unworkable constitution that resulted from the Zurich-London agreements of 1959. In 1963 President Makarios of Cyprus announced his decision to unilaterally revise the constitution because it permitted Turkish Cypriots to frustrate the administration of Cyprus. Consequently, violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots broke out, and an uneasy peace returned with the arrival of the United Nations peacekeeping force in 1964. [12] Negotiations were held between the two communities, but "since the Greeks persisted in believing that the basis of negotiations was enosis for Cyprus, coupled with compensations for Turkey, it was not surprising that they proved abortive." [13] Even though the Cyprus crisis proved to be a serious problem for the government of Papandreou (who had secured a narrow victory over Karamanlis in the elections of 1963), what led to its dispute with the King was control of the armed forces, of which the King was the Commander-in-Chief. Papandreou wanted to replace many senior army officers whom he considered to be sympathetic to right-wing governments. He also believed that there was a conspiracy within the army against him. In the end, evidence emerged of a left-wing conspiracy within the army under the name...
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