The Greek exit from NATO enabled Turkey to be assigned NATO air defence duties over the Aegean and this challenged all Greek NATO assignments and operational responsibilities. Eventually, by October 1975, Greece had informed Brussels that they were interested in re-entering the NATO military wing. By July 1978 Brussels and Athens had formulated a re-entry framework despite Turkish objections. To the dismay of the Greeks, Turkey argued in favour of ‘a joint (Greek-Turkish) Aegean Sea defence against Warsaw Pact forces’.57
Domestically, the period of smooth political transition which followed the Junta was a result of Karamanlis’s insightful political thinking. He did not embark on mass purges against Junta sympathisers as his main task was to control potential domestic unrest and to avoid a national division among all political ideologies (rightists, centrists, leftists and Junta-sympathisers). He checked the aspirations of Junta sympathisers and members of the royalist groups by employing the retired Lieutenant-General Solon Gikas, a royalist and former member of the pro-Junta IDEA conspiracy organization, as Secretary for Public Order, responsible for the police intelligence services in the first post-junta government. Gikas controlled royalist societies within the armed forces. However Karamanlis received intelligence on many occasions between 1974 and 1978 about potential assassinations and coups in preparations. In late August 1974, he was warned that a coup would be organised on 2nd September and that the conspirators planned to shoot him during a party rally speech in Salonika. Eventually, Karamanlis stayed aboard the warship Canaris anchored off Salonika harbour.
In February 1975, another coup was thwarted by the KYP and MoD. The royalist Army officers planned to mobilise their followers on the evening of 24th February but the security services arrested the majority of the mutineers on time. The armed forces were put on alert pending the arrest of all conspirators. In October 1975, new intelligence on a royalist coup reached Karamanlis and the armed forces were once again placed on alert. By January 1976, the Prime Minister had fresh intelligence about the conspiratorial activities of retired Colonel Michalis Arnautis, a former Aid de Camp of King Constantine II. In October 1976, British intelligence informed the Greek ambassador about the preparations for a coup by royalists in London. British security services confirmed a link between Constantine II and the coup conspirators and that Karamanlis’s life was in danger. In late October, the British ambassador in Athens warned Karamanlis that the coup preparations were intensifying and would be implemented soon. On 18th November, the British Prime Minister James Callaghan personally warned former King Constantine II, who had been residing in London, ‘not to interfere in such [conspiratorial] activities while on British soil’. Constantine denied everything. The royalists abstained from further preparations, but would resume their activities again in 1978. Significantly, Karamanlis avoided publishing intelligence on the coup attempts (even if the evidence proved royalist guilt) because he wanted to avoid giving the impression that democracy was still in jeopardy.58 Between 1974 and1978, the KYP and MoD had feared a successful coup against Karamanlis by royalists and Junta sympathisers from within the Officer Corps as well as left wing terrorism; the terrorist organisation ‘17 November’ had recently assassinated a number of American and Greek officials.59 In a time of perceived threats from Turkey and Bulgaria, Greek intelligence had to secure domestic security against internal conspirators.
Meanwhile, the anti-Junta policies of Karamanlis had been selectively aiming at the political decapitation of the Junta and the royalists. The Junta leaders Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos and Brigadiers Makarezos and Ioanidis were sentenced to death, a punishment later commuted to life imprisonment. Approximately 110 prominent Junta members (mainly from the Greek Military Police) received jail terms for torture. However high ranking PASOK members, such as the future Secretary of Defence retired Colonel Giannis Charalampopoulos, declared that within the Greek armed forces and the Police, ‘Junta conspirators remained and operated against democracy’.60
In December 1974, a referendum decided in favour of a republic. Prime Minister Karamanlis planned a European-centric foreign policy for Greece and modernised the Greek armed forces for ‘adequate deterrence’. However he did not opt for a second war with Turkey over the issue of Cyprus or for an uncontrolled arms race. He intended to avoid the sort of ‘chain reactions’ which had sparked Arab-Israeli wars. As Professor Theodoros Couloumbis argues, Karamanlis assumed that by using a mixture of political, economic and diplomatic (but not military) means against Ankara he could regulate Turkish intentions on Cyprus and on the Aegean Sea disputes.61
Karamanlis’s political opponent was Andreas Papandreou, a US-educated academic, economist and former Cabinet Secretary in the early 1960s who returned from exile to Greece in August 1974 and on 3rd September founded the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). Papandreou and his political party, which ‘had been built by him and around him’, increased in mass support.62 In the 1974 elections, PASOK took 13.58% (13 Members of Parliament), in 1977 25.34% (93 Members of Parliament) and eventually, in 1981 won with 48.06% (174 Members of Parliament). Papandreou was able to unite the political left and centre around him with populist and nationalist policy declarations and his oratory skills. During September 1976 in which a Turkish exploration vessel named the Hora was found in the Greek-claimed continental shelf, international waters, Papandreou declared in the Greek Parliament ‘Sink the Hora’. This was not just a phrase but ‘clear political symbolism’ which referred not only to the present Greek-Turkish crisis, but to all future bilateral issues, as Papandreou cited later that year.63 Papandreou directed the blame towards the US for the survival of the seven-year Junta and for not intervening in Cyprus during the summer of 1974. PASOK considerably influenced public opinion, arguing that Washington provided the ‘aggressive’ Turkey with military and political support. PASOK and the two Greek communist parties (legalised by Karamanlis in 1975) were in agreement about the American intervention in Greek politics since the late 1940s and the tragedy of Cyprus. As a result, the anti-American faction of Members of Parliament (who would be assigned future administrative posts in the 1980s), political cadets, trade unionists and public opinion ideologues increased. However the communist parties did not gain more support and gradually during the 1980s, they were isolated to 10-14% of the votes.
By the late 1970s, the competition between PASOK and Nea Dimokratia became more intense and increasingly polarised. The foreign policy advocated by the conservatives argued that Greek interests would be better served by joining the European Economic Community (EEC). However this vision had limited influence on Greek public opinion in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The predominantly anti-imperialist, nationalistic, anti-American, anti-Turkish, anti-EEC PASOK declared the need for ‘national independence and sovereignty’ and the need for ‘change’ in domestic affairs gained social momentum. The domestic confrontation between PASOK and ND in the 1980s was also fuelled by the personalities of their respective leaders. Papandreou and the conservative leader Constantine Mitsotakis had harboured strong animosity since 1965, when Mitsotakis, while serving as a cabinet member, voted against and overthrew the administration of Andrea’s father, Georgios Papandreou, in Parliament.
Meanwhile, a majority of Greek public opinion, the Press, trade unions and politicians (even rightists) were influenced by anti-American attitudes in response to the Cyprus crisis and US support for Turkey after the US Congress arms embargo on Ankara had ended in 1978. In 1979, centre and leftist politicians and the Press hailed the fall of the Shah’s rule in Iran and the emergence of a new anti-American power. However commentators of Greek public opinion and influential politicians failed to understand that the fall of the Shah had forced Washington to depend more on Turkey for maintaining forces, diplomatic leverage and intelligence gathering assets against the USSR in that region. As a result, a large portion of pro-PASOK public opinion, remembering the Junta regime and the invasion of Cyprus, remained nationalistic and anti-American,