Georgios Papadopoulos in the context of "Greek Junta"

The Greek junta or Regime of the Colonels was a right-wing military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. On 21 April 1967, a group of colonels overthrew a caretaker government a month before scheduled elections which Georgios Papandreou's Centre Union was favoured to win.

The dictatorship was characterised by policies such as anti-communism, restrictions on civil liberties, and the imprisonment, torture, and exile of political opponents. It was ruled by Georgios Papadopoulos from 1967 to 1973, but an attempt to renew popular support in a 1973 referendum on the monarchy and gradual democratisation by Papadopoulos was ended by another coup by the hardliner Dimitrios Ioannidis. Ioannidis ruled until it fell on 24 July 1974 under the pressure of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, leading to the Metapolitefsi ("regime change"; Greek: Μεταπολίτευση) to democracy and the establishment of the Third Hellenic Republic.
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A referendum on the constitutional form of the state was held in Greece on 8 December 1974.

After the collapse of the military junta that ruled the country since 1967, the longstanding dispute between republicans and monarchists re-emerged. The junta had already held a referendum of dubious integrity the previous year on the same question, producing a vote in favor of a republic, which Georgios Papadopoulos used as a pretext to have himself declared President. However, after the collapse of the military regime and free elections the previous month, the newly elected government of Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis decided to re-run the vote, the junta-era referendum being widely considered both electorally and legally questionable.

The Metapolitefsi (Greek: Μεταπολίτευση, romanized: Metapolítefsi, IPA: [metapoˈlitefsi], "regime change") was a period in modern Greek history from the fall of the Ioannides military junta of 1973–74 to the transition period shortly after the 1974 legislative elections.

The metapolitefsi was ignited by the liberalisation plan of military dictator Georgios Papadopoulos, which was opposed by prominent politicians such as Panagiotis Kanellopoulos and Stephanos Stephanopoulos, and halted by the massive Athens Polytechnic uprising against the military junta. The counter coup of Dimitrios Ioannides, and his coup d'etat against President of Cyprus Makarios III, which led to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, brought the dictatorship down.