Greece celebrates 50 years of democracy

Greece is celebrating 50 years of democracy, the restoration of which followed the collapse of the seven-year junta that ended disastrously with the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974.

The return of the exiled former prime minister Konstantinos Karamanlis, who was to serve an additional six years as prime minister and then 10 as president, marked the period described as the Metapolitefsi, which however one sees it, has been the most free and democratic one in the nation's history, both for the lives of individual citizens as well as the functioning of institutions.

This success is largely due to Karamanlis, who, in the eyes of most (including his political opponents), embodied the characteristics of a statesman who saved his country; who took it from the brink of the abyss and, in record time, transformed a divided nation still living with the scars of civil war...