Conservatism in Greece

He was killed on April 6th 1941 - The "Metaxas Line" legacy

Earlier this year Kathimerini organized a three-day conference looking back at the 50 years since the restoration of democracy in Greece in 1974, or the Metapolitefsi.

The Municipality of Iraklio on Crete has of its own accord put a freeze on the imposition of fines for illegal structures in the city.

A network of thousands of underground spaces are scattered beneath Athens. Pedestrians hurry past them, not suspecting that the metal lid of a manhole they have just stepped on is one of the gates to a vast web of spaces, which for decades has been sealed in silence and oblivion.

To begin with the word itself: Let us remember that the first "Metapolitefsi" (the restoration of democracy) had already taken place before the Junta's fall, in 1973.

General Ioannis Metaxas' regime (1936-41) built some 400 bomb shelters in Athens, while it imposed by law the creation of a shelter in every new building, raising the number to 5,500 from 1936 to 1940, author and researcher Konstantinos Kyrimis, who has been recording them for over a decade, tells Kathimerini, citing an official Hellenic Army report.

Greece's Kathimerini newspaper just reported on the contents of the final draft of a letter from the State Department to Congress that implies that the F-16 and F-35 sales to Turkey and Greece come with conditions, refuting Ankara's narrative that no such letter existed.

Like many other countries, Greece faced a trilemma in the last 15 years: Could it, somehow, reconcile democracy, economic growth and globalization? No, as it turns out.

It is good sometimes to look at our history as a neutral observer and remember what we owe and to whom. On the 50th anniversary of the restoration of democracy, known in Greece as the Metapolitefsi, one leader stands out, high above the rest: Konstantinos Karamanlis.

In April of 1947, in the midst of the civil war, the leader of the Nationalist Party (renamed People's Party in 1920), Theodoros Tourkovasilis, while speaking to the Greek Parliament, mentioned Switzerland in passing: "I was recently given the chance to admire this people and to see the fine organization of this state up close. Switzerland is indeed a masterpiece of a state.