On July 23, 1974, the seven-year dictatorship of Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos collapsed under the weight of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
The former Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis was invited to return. Huge crowds gathered to greet him at Athens airport and there was jubilation in the streets of the Greek capital to mark the beginning of a return to democracy.
Conservative Karamanlis, 67, was Prime Minister for an unprecedented eight years until the centre-left won power in the country’s last democratic election in 1963.
At the time, a spokesman for the Greek armed forces explained the junta’s decision to step down as “in view of the position in which the country finds itself.”
In the morning of July 24, Karamanlis was sworn in as Prime Minister by the Archbishop of Athens and in the presence of the President of the Republic, General Gizikis.
At noon of the same day, the first echelon of his government was sworn in, consisting of right-wing and center-right politicians.
Immediately after, the first measures for the restoration of democracy were announced:
- the abolition of the Gyaros camp.
- The release of all prisoners.
- The amnesty of all political crimes.
- The return of citizenship to the citizens who had been deprived of it by the dictatorship of 1967.
In its immediate aims, the government included the restoration of democratic normalcy and the formation of a climate of national unity, the disorganisation of the dictatorship’s power grid and the restoration of political control in the army, the preparation for elections and the resolution of the crisis in Cyprus.
