The transition period, known as Metapolitefsi, began at 2 am on July 24, 1974, when the French presidential plane landed at Ellinikon Airport. Konstantinos Karamanlis was greeted like a hero by thousands of citizens who had gathered in the middle of the night to welcome him. The colonels’ junta was collapsing, the Turks were advancing in Cyprus, and the mobilization attempt by the Ioannidis regime had become a farce. The leaders of the Armed Forces approached the interim President of the Republic, Phaedon Gizikis, to request a government that included politicians.
A few hours later, everything had changed—but this transformation required the covert intervention of a politician and several junta officers.