Linkage Politics: the Role of the European Community in Greek Politics in 1973

The convulsions which began to shake the Greek military regime with the first student protests at the end of 1972 and which reached their climax in 1973 with the uprising at the Polytechnic in November, have been exhaustively analysed and discussed. However, they have always been viewed either through the prism of internal political developments or in the light of events in Cyprus. The international context remains largely unexplored. The only element which has been taken into account is the ‘American factor’, yet the reasons for the change in American policy towards the regime in the Autumn of 1973 have not been sufficiently analysed. Such testimony as we have comes from representatives of the Greek or American governments. Spyros Markezinis, the junta’s civilian Prime Minister, attributes the fall of his government to the war in the Middle East. Certainly, Kissinger in his memoirs does not conceal his displeasure at the junta’s refusal to facilitate the transportation of war materiel to Israel at the most critical phase of the Arab-Israeli War in the Autumn of 1973.