the new right wing party Nea Dimokratia (New Democracy, ND). Nea Dimokratia included the pro-democracy, right wing supporters of the 1960s and followed the pattern of a pro-US, pro-Western Greek foreign policy. However as De Gaulle had done in 1966, Karamanlis declared on 14th August that Greece would exit NATO’s military wing in protest against Brussels’ inaction during the second Turkish invasion. Athens argued that ‘the principal reason was the proven inability of the North Atlantic Alliance to stop Turkey from aggression’.54 All political parties hailed his decision. As Georgios Rallis, the former Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the Karamanlis Cabinet, later explained, by leaving NATO Greece aimed to cause a reaction in the West. However Greek politicians and public opinion had mistakenly overestimated the importance of Greece to NATO’s South East wing. Athens predicted that her brinkmanship would provoke Washington and London to react in favour of Greece to retain her in the NATO alliance. Unfortunately, as Rallis later commented, ‘the results were not the expected ones’. London and Washington did not attempt to deter Turkish aggression in Cyprus.55
By May 1975, British staff officers had assessed the implications of the Greek withdrawal from NATO and concluded that it was Athens and not NATO which faced major military disadvantages. The staff officers commented that ‘there were indications that the Greek government had failed to evaluate all the implications of their decision’. Greece was not capable of defending herself against any offensive from Warsaw Pact nations. Every branch of the Greek armed forces required urgent reorganisation and NATO officers assumed that they could not react quickly enough to aid Greece if necessary. The British strategists assessed that this decision ‘obliged the Greeks to adopt a posture of independent, unassisted, national defence, one which we believe would lack credibility’. The decision to withdraw also inhibited NATO’s ability to help Turkey in times of war and would also ‘seriously weaken the Alliance’s deterrent posture in the Southern region’. However ‘apart from the psychological effect on the Alliance’, British military interests were not directly affected. With reference to the contribution of Greek military intelligence to NATO, the British estimated that the withdrawal would ‘lead to a delay in Alliance reaction to a Warsaw Pact threat, although there are overlapping contributions to intelligence assessments from American intelligence stations in Greece (which may well be allowed to remain) Turkey, Italy and Cyprus which diminish the effect on the Alliance’. In addition, Greece did not show any sign of leaving the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG). US-made tactical nuclear weapons were held as a deterrent by the Greek Army in the event of a Warsaw Pact offensive. However ‘the NPG’s work is so bound up with collective defence generally that it would hardly make sense for a country not in NATO’s Integrated Military Structure to participate in discussions on NATO’s nuclear policy’.56 In political terms and under public pressure, the Greek withdrawal appeared justified. In strategic and operational terms, however it created many serious problems for Greek defence modernisation. The hot political atmosphere of the summer of 1974 in Athens and the lack of faith in Greek officers (who could not be influential in foreign policy after their seven-year Junta) contributed to this controversial decision.
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
