It was exactly 39 years ago, on this day, when the military dictatorship in Greece imposed by a Coup on 21 April 1967 collapsed as a result of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus three days earlier.
The military government collapsed and the former conservative Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis was invited to return to Greece from his self-imposed exile in Paris in order to form a National Unity government.
Mr Karamanlis, 67 at the time, was Prime Minister for an unprecedented eight years until the centre-left in Greece, under the leadership of Georgios Papandreou, grandfather of former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, won power in the country’s last democratic election in 1963.
Constantine Karamanlis, elected twice as Prime Minister and as President of Greece, was the founder of New Democracy, Greece’s major government party today.
He was in self-imposed exile in Paris and he was one of eight former senior politicians invited to return by the foundering military leadership.