Константин Караманлис: Грекияның көрнекті саяхатшысы және мемлекет қайраткері

Prime Minister of Greece intermittently between 1955–80, President from 1980–85, 1990–95
the former Greek president who lived from 1907 to 1998

Konstantinos G. Karamanlis (Κωνσταντίνος Γ. Καραμανλής, ; 8 March 1907 – 23 April 1998), commonly anglicised to Constantine Karamanlis or just Caramanlis, was a four time Prime Minister of Greece and two term president of the Third Hellenic Republic. A towering figure of Greek politics, his political career spanned portions of seven decades, covering much of the latter half of the 20th century. Born near Serres in Macedonia, Karamanlis practiced law until his election to the Hellenic Parliament in 1936 as a member of the conservative People's Party. Rising through the ranks of Greek politics after World War II, Karamanlis became Minister of Labour in 1947, and in 1951 he was named Minister for Public Works in Alexandros Papagos's Greek Rally administration. He was appointed prime minister by King Paul of Greece after Papagos's death in 1955. During his first term, he applied a program of rapid industrialization, heavy investment on infrastructure and improvement on agricultural production, which led to the post war Greek economic miracle. He also implemented the extension of full voting rights to women, which had stood dormant since 1952. In foreign affairs, he pursued an aggressive policy toward Greek membership in the European Economic Community (EEC), and abandoned the government's previous strategic goal for enosis (the unification of Greece and Cyprus) in favour of Cypriot independence. In 1963, Karamanlis resigned following a disagreement with King Paul amidst spiralling political crises in Greece. He spent the next eleven years in self imposed exile in Paris, while the country fell under military dictatorship after the 1967 coup d'état. After the fall of the junta in 1974, Karamanlis was recalled to Athens to assume interim premiership. This period, known as the Metapolitefsi, saw the country's transition to a pluralist democracy. His new party, New Democracy, won a commanding victory in the November 1974 elections, which were followed by a plebiscite that abolished the monarchy and established the Third Hellenic Republic. In 1980, Karamanlis resigned as prime minister and was elected President of the Republic. In 1981, he oversaw Greece's formal entry into the European Economic Community. He resigned from the presidency in 1985 but was again elected in 1990, and served until his retirement from active politics in 1995. Karamanlis died in 1998 at the age of 91.

Karamanlis was born in the village of Proti, near the city of Serres, Macedonia, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. He became a Greek citizen in 1913, after the region of Macedonia was annexed by Greece in the aftermath of the First and Second Balkan War. His father was Georgios Karamanlis, a teacher who fought during the Greek Struggle for Macedonia, in 1904–1908. After spending his childhood in Macedonia, he went to Athens to attain his degree in law. He practised law in Serres, entered politics with the conservative People's Party and was elected Member of Parliament for the first time in the 1936 election at the age of 28. Health problems made him not participate in the Greco Italian War. During the Axis occupation, he spent his time between Athens and Serres, while in July 1944, he left to the Middle East to join the Greek government in exile.

After World War II, Karamanlis quickly rose through the ranks of Greek politics. His rise was strongly supported by fellow party member and close friend Lambros Eftaxias, who served as Minister for Agriculture under the premiership of Konstantinos Tsaldaris. Karamanlis's first cabinet position was Minister for Labour in 1947 under the same administration. In 1951, along with most prominent members of the People's Party, Karamanlis joined the Greek Rally of Alexandros Papagos. When this party won the Greek legislative election on 9 September 1951, Karamanlis became Minister of Public Works in the Papagos administration. He won the admiration of the US Embassy for the efficiency with which he built road infrastructure and administered American aid programs. When Papagos died after a brief illness (October 1955), King Paul of Greece appointed the 48 year old Karamanlis as prime minister. Merten's arrest also enraged Queen Frederica, a woman with German ties, who wondered whether "this is the way mister district attorney understands the development of German and Greek relations". In Germany, Merten was eventually acquitted from all charges due to "lack of evidence." On 28 September 1960 German newspapers Hamburger Echo and Der Spiegel published excerpts of Merten's deposition to the German authorities where Merten claimed that Karamanlis, the then Minister for the Interior Takos Makris and his wife Doxoula (whom he described as Karamanlis's niece), along with then Deputy Minister of Defense Georgios Themelis were informers in Thessaloniki during the Nazi occupation of Greece. Merten alleged that Karamanlis and Makris were rewarded for their services with a business in Thessaloniki which belonged to a Greek Jew sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. He also alleged that he had pressured Karamanlis and Makris to grant amnesty and release him from prison. Karamanlis rejected the claims as unsubstantiated and absurd, and accused Merten of attempting to extort money from him prior to making the statements. The West German government (Third Adenauer cabinet) also decried the accusations as calumniatory and libelous. Karamanlis accused the opposition party of instigating a smear campaign against him. Although Karamanlis never pressed charges against Merten, charges were pressed in Greece against Der Spiegel by Takos and Doxoula Makris and Themelis, and the magazine was found guilty of slander in 1963. Merten did not appear to testify during the Greek court proceedings. The Merten Affair remained at the centre of political discussions until early 1961. Merten's accusations against Karamanlis were never corroborated in a court of law. Historian Giannis Katris, an ardent critic of Karamanlis, argued in 1971 that Karamanlis should have resigned the premiership and pressed charges against Merten as a private individual in German courts, in order to fully clear his name. Nonetheless, Katris rejects the accusations as "unsubstantiated" and "obviously fallacious". He personally lobbied European leaders, such as Germany's Konrad Adenauer and France's Charles de Gaulle followed by two years of intense negotiations with Brussels. His intense lobbying bore fruit and on 9 July 1961 his government and the Europeans signed the protocols of Greece's Treaty of Association with the European Economic Community (EEC). The signing ceremony in Athens was attended by top government delegations from the six member bloc of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands, a precursor of the European Union. Economy Minister Aristidis Protopapadakis and Foreign Minister Evangelos Averoff were also present. Soon after returning to Greece during metapolitefsi Karamanlis reactivated his push for the country's full EEC membership in 1975 citing political and economic reasons. U. S. journalist Cyrus L. Sulzberger has separately claimed that Karamanlis flew to New York to visit Lauris Norstad and lobby US support for a coup d'état in Greece that would establish a strong conservative regime under himself; Sulzberger alleges that Norstad declined to involve himself in such affairs. Sulzberger's account, which unlike that of the former King was delivered during the lifetime of those implicated (Karamanlis and Norstad), rested solely on the authority of his and Norstad's word. When in 1997, the former King reiterated Sulzberger's allegations, Karamanlis stated that he "will not deal with the former king's statements because both their content and attitude are unworthy of comment." The deposed King's adoption of Sulzberger's claims against Karamanlis was castigated by left leaning media, typically critical of Karamanlis, as "shameless" and "brazen". It bears noting that, at the time, the former King referred exclusively to Sulzberger's account, to support the theory of a planned coup by Karamanlis, and made no mention of the alleged 1966 meeting with Bitsios, which he would refer to only after both participants had died and could not respond. On 21 April 1967, constitutional order was usurped by a coup d'état led by officers around Colonel George Papadopoulos. The King accepted to swear in the military appointed government as the legitimate government of Greece, but launched an abortive counter coup to overthrow the junta eight months later. Constantine and his family then fled the country.

In 2001, former agents of the Eastern German secret police, the Stasi, claimed to Greek investigative reporters that during the Cold War, they had orchestrated an operation of evidence falsification, to present Karamanlis as having planned a coup and thus damage his reputation in an apparent disinformation propaganda campaign. The operation allegedly centered on a falsified conversation between Karamanlis and Strauss, a Bavarian officer of the King.

In 1974, the invasion of Cyprus by the Turks led to the collapse of the military junta. On 23 July 1974, President Phaedon Gizikis called a meeting of old guard politicians, including Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, Spiros Markezinis, Stephanos Stephanopoulos, Evangelos Averoff and others. The heads of the armed forces also participated in the meeting. The agenda was to appoint a national unity government that would lead the country to elections. Former prime minister Panagiotis Kanellopoulos was originally suggested as the head of the new interim government. He was the interim prime minister originally deposed by the dictatorship in 1967 and a distinguished politician who had repeatedly criticized Papadopoulos and his successor. Raging battles were still taking place in Cyprus' north when Greeks took to the streets in all the major cities, celebrating the junta's decision to relinquish power before the war in Cyprus could spill all over the Aegean. Karamanlis was sworn in as prime minister under President pro tempore Phaedon Gizikis who remained in power in the interim, till December 1974, for legal continuity reasons until a new constitution could be enacted during metapolitefsi and was subsequently replaced by duly elected President Michail Stasinopoulos. During the inherently unstable first weeks of the metapolitefsi, Karamanlis was forced to sleep aboard a yacht watched over by a destroyer for fear of a new coup. Karamanlis attempted to defuse the tension between Greece and Turkey, which were on the brink of war over the Cyprus crisis, through the diplomatic route. Two successive conferences in Geneva, where the Greek government was represented by George Mavros, failed to avert a full scale invasion by Turkey on 14 August 1974 or the subsequent Turkish occupation of 37 percent of Cyprus. As a protest, Karamanlis led the country outside of the military branch of NATO and remained out until 1980. The steadfast process of transition from military rule to a pluralist democracy proved successful. During this transition period of the metapolitefsi, Karamanlis legalized the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) that was banned since the civil war. The legalization of the communist party was considered by many as a gesture of political inclusionism and rapprochement. At the same time he also freed all political prisoners and pardoned all political crimes against the junta. Following through with his reconciliation theme he also adopted a measured approach to removing collaborators and appointees of the dictatorship from the positions they held in government bureaucracy, and declared that free elections would be held in November 1974, four months after the collapse of the Regime of the Colonels.

Influenced by Gaullist principles, Karamanlis founded the conservative party of New Democracy and in the 1974 elections achieved a record 54.4% victory (the greatest electoral victory in modern Greek history), obtained a massive parliamentary majority and he was elected prime minister. The elections were soon followed by the 1974 plebiscite on the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a Hellenic Republic, the televised 1975 trials (Greek Junta Trials) of the former dictators (who received death sentences for high treason and mutiny that were later commuted to life incarceration) and the writing of the new Constitution. In 1977, New Democracy again won the elections, and Karamanlis continued to serve as prime minister until 1980. The external policy of his governments, for the first time since the war, favoured a multi polar approach between US, Soviet Union and the Third World; a policy continued also by his successor Andreas Papandreou. Under Karamanlis's premiership, his government also undertook numerous nationalizations in several sectors, including banking and transportation. Karamanlis's policies of economic statism, which fostered a large state run sector, have been described by many as socialmania.

Following his signing of the Accession Treaty with the European Economic Community (now the European Union) in 1979, Karamanlis relinquished the Premiership and was elected President of the Republic in 1980 by the Parliament, and in 1981 he oversaw Greece's formal entry into the European Economic Community as its tenth member. He served until 1985 then resigned and was succeeded by Christos Sartzetakis. It is famous his phrase during the 1989 political crisis and the political polarisation of the era: "Hellas has been transformed to an endless bedlam." In 1990 he was re elected President by a conservative parliamentary majority (under the conservative government of then Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis) and served until 1995, when he was succeeded by Kostis Stephanopoulos.

Karamanlis retired in 1995, at the age of 88, having won 5 parliamentary elections, and having spent 14 years as prime minister, 10 years as President of the Republic, and a total of more than sixty years in active politics. For his long service to democracy and as a pioneer of European integration from the earliest stages of the European Union, Karamanlis was awarded one of the most prestigious European prizes, the Karlspreis, in 1978. He bequeathed his archives to the Konstantinos Karamanlis Foundation, a conservative think tank he had founded and endowed. Karamanlis died after a short illness in 1998, at the age of 91. Karamanlis married Amalia Megapanou Kanellopoulou (1929–2020) in 1951, the niece of Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, a prominent politician. They divorced in 1972 in Paris, without ever having children. Karamanlis remained childless all his life.

Karamanlis has been praised for presiding over an early period of fast economic growth for Greece (1955–63) and for being the primary engineer of Greece's successful bid for membership in the European Union. His supporters lauded him as the charismatic Ethnarches (National Leader). Some of his left wing opponents have accused him of condoning rightist "para statal" groups, whose members undertook Via kai Notheia (Violence and Corruption), i. e., fraud during the electoral contests between ERE and Papandreou's Center Union party, and were responsible for the assassination of Gregoris Lambrakis. Some of Karamanlis's conservative opponents have criticized his socialist economic policies during the 1970s, which included the nationalization of Olympic Airways and Emporiki Bank and the creation of a large public sector. Karamanlis has also been criticized by Ange S. Vlachos for indecisiveness in his management of the Cyprus crisis in 1974 even though it is widely acknowledged that he skillfully avoided an all out war with Turkey during that time. Karamanlis is recognised for his successful restoration of Democracy during metapolitefsi and the repair of the two great national schisms by legalising the communist party and by establishing the system of parliamentary democracy in Greece. His successful prosecution of the junta during the junta trials and the heavy sentences imposed on the junta principals also sent a message to the army that the era of immunity from constitutional transgressions by the military was over. His nephew Kostas Karamanlis later became the leader of the New Democracy party (Nea Demokratia) and Prime Minister of Greece from 2004 to 2009. Another nephew, also named Kostas Karamanlis, served as Minister of Infrastructure and Transport from 2019 to 2023.

On 29 June 2005 an audio visual tribute celebrating Konstantinos Karamanlis' contribution to Greek culture took place at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. George Remoundos was the stage director and Stavros Xarhakos conducted and selected the music. The event under the title of Cultural Memories was organised by the Konstantinos G. Karamanlis Foundation. In 2007 several events were held to celebrate 100 years since his birth.