Karamanlis’s Cautious Success: the Background

Abstract

AN ANONYMOUS COMMENTATOR ON THE GREEK POLITICAL SCENE predicted in 1970 that it was unlikely that the Greeks, even if resentful of the Colonels' 'unta, would ‘respond widely to their presently exiled (self- or otherwise) erstwhile political leaders’ and concluded that 'the self-exiled Karamanlis, with his protracted silences, had lost much of his credit with his followers’. He was by no means alone in writing off the old politicians in general, and Constantine Karamanlis in particular, as a serious factor in the Greek political equation. But when the Greek military regime collapsed in July 1974 in the wake of President Makarios's overthrow in Cyprus and the subsequent Turkish invasion, President Phaidon Gizikis had no other choice than to summon the 67-year-old Constantine Karamanlis to clear up the mess created by seven years of military government. Karamanlis, far from being a spent force, returned to a welcome verging on delirium and looks set fair for another long term as Prime Minister and most likely, once the new constitution has been enacted, as President of Greece.