Metapolitefsi
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The Metapolitefsi ("regime change") was a period in modern Greek history after the fall of the military junta of 1967–74 that includes the transitional period from the fall of the dictatorship to the 1974 legislative elections and the democratic period immediately after these elections.
The long course towards the metapolitefsi began with the disputed liberalisation plan of Georgios Papadopoulos, the head of the military dictatorship. This process was opposed by prominent politicians, such as Panagiotis Kanellopoulos and Stephanos Stephanopoulos. Papadopoulos's plan was halted with the Athens Polytechnic uprising, a massive demonstration of popular rejection of the military junta, and the counter coup staged by Dimitrios Ioannides.
Ioannides's failed coup d'état against the elected president of Cyprus, Makarios III, and the subsequent Turkish invasion resulted in the fall of the dictatorship and the appointment of an interim government, known as the "national unity government", led by former prime minister Konstantinos Karamanlis. Karamanlis legalised the Communist Party (KKE) and founded New Democracy, a center-right party which won by a landslide the elections of 1974 (the first elections in Greece after the fall of the junta).
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