Konstantinos Karamanlis

A, a dictatorship, uh, comes into power and ultimately self-destructs on the rocks of the idea of Cyprus being part of Greece.

And that, in a sense, brings to a conclusion the beginning of that phase of the Greek American relationship, a closeness, because my argument is that from the 19-- the mid-1970s onwards, when democracy is restored in Greece, when Konstantinos Karamanlis returns from exile and becomes, in a sense, the great figure of Greek politics, uh, post-junta, his determination was never to rely solely on the United States of America again for the protection of Greek foreign policy interest, not just with Turkey, but beyond as well.

And it begins this sort of shift, not of unilateralism, a shift, a pivot to trying to find other guarantors for Greek foreign policy interests beyond the United States of America.

Very simply, why? Because Turkey was strategically very important to the USA and this, the evidence for this, the final evidence for this was the fact that Turkey was allowed, the argument goes, to invade Cyprus, right, in 1974 with the Americans turning a blind eye because Turkey was such an important ally.

And so you have this shift from being completely dependent on the United States of America in diplomatic and security terms to trying to find security guarantees and foreign policy protection elsewhere, and I think that's one of the reasons why the process towards EU membership is speeded up so fast in the late 1970s under the leadership of Karamanlis.

He wanted to somehow move away from being completely beholden to Washington.

The fact that he suspended Greece's membership from the military, uh, command of NATO, uh, uh, at the end of, uh, 1970 or the-- in the middle of the 1970s is a key, I think, piece of evidence that suggests that there was something there which was more than just a protest.

This sort of really neatly explains sort of the next element in all of this, which of course was Greece joining, uh, the European Union, uh, European Economic Community as, as, as it was back then.

The regime's illusion of military strength evaporated instantly as disorganized forces realized they could not fight an international war while their leaders bickered in Athens.

Civilian rule triumphantly returned between July 23 and 24 under Konstantinos Karamanlis, officially concluding the seven-year dictatorial nightmare and ushering in the modern democratic era.

Orchestrating a reckless foreign coup entirely to distract a frustrated public from your own failing domestic dictatorship is not as silly as it sounds.

Wait, no, it actually is profoundly silly and predictably caused the total collapse of the junta.