37 Facts About Constantine Karamanlis

Konstantinos G Karamanlis, commonly anglicised to Constantine Karamanlis or just Caramanlis, was a four-time prime minister and twice as the president of the Third Hellenic Republic, and a towering figure of Greek politics, whose political career spanned much of the latter half of the 20th century.

Constantine Karamanlis implemented the extension of full voting rights to women, which had stood dormant since 1952.

Constantine Karamanlis's supporters lauded him as the charismatic Ethnarches .

Constantine Karamanlis was born in the village of Proti, near the city of Serres, Macedonia, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire.

Constantine Karamanlis 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.

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Constantine Karamanlis 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.

Constantine Karamanlis's 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.

When this party won the Greek legislative election on 9 September 1951, Constantine Karamanlis became Minister of Public Works in the Papagos administration.

Constantine Karamanlis won the admiration of the US Embassy for the efficiency with which he built road infrastructure and administered American aid programs.

Constantine Karamanlis was convicted in Greece and sentenced to a 25-year term as a war criminal in 1959.

Constantine Karamanlis alleged that he had pressured Karamanlis and Makris to grant amnesty and release him from prison.

Constantine Karamanlis rejected the claims as unsubstantiated and absurd, and accused Merten of attempting to extort money from him prior to making the statements.

Constantine Karamanlis accused the opposition party of instigating a smear campaign against him.

Constantine Karamanlis'storian 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.

Constantine Karamanlis considered Greece's entry into the EEC a personal dream because he saw it as the fulfillment of what he called "Greece's European Destiny".

Constantine Karamanlis 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.

Constantine Karamanlis's 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 .

Constantine Karamanlis was convinced that Greece's membership in the EEC would ensure political stability in a nation having just undergone a transition from dictatorship to Democracy.

Constantine Karamanlis' position was further undermined, and Papandreou's claims of an independently acting "para-state" given more credence, following the assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis, a leftist member of Parliament, by right-wing extremists during a pro-peace demonstration in Thessaloniki in May 1963, who were later revealed to have close links to the local gendarmerie.

Constantine Karamanlis was shocked by the assassination, was heavily criticized by the opposition of Georgios Papandreou, and he stated:.

Constantine Karamanlis opposed the trip, as he feared that it would provide the occasion for demonstrations against the political prisoners still held in Greece since the Civil War.

Constantine Karamanlis spent the next 11 years in self-imposed exile in Paris, France.

Constantine Karamanlis was succeeded by Panagiotis Kanellopoulos as the ERE leader.

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 Constantine Karamanlis as having planned a coup and thus damage his reputation in an apparent disinformation propaganda campaign.

Constantine Karamanlis was the interim Prime Minister originally deposed by the dictatorship in 1967 and a distinguished politician who had repeatedly criticized Papadopoulos and his successor.

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Constantine Karamanlis insisted that Karamanlis was the only political personality who could lead a successful transition government, taking into consideration the new circumstances and dangers both inside and outside the country.

Constantine Karamanlis was now called to end his self-imposed exile and restore democracy to the place where it was originally invented.

Constantine 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 replaced by duly elected President Michail Stasinopoulos.

Constantine 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.

Constantine Karamanlis served until 1985 then resigned and was succeeded by Christos Sartzetakis.

Constantine 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.

Constantine Karamanlis bequeathed his archives to the Konstantinos Karamanlis Foundation, a conservative think tank he had founded and endowed.

Constantine Karamanlis died after a short illness in 1998, at the age of 91.

Constantine Karamanlis married Amalia Megapanou in 1951, the niece of Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, a prominent politician.

Constantine Karamanlis has been praised for presiding over an early period of fast economic growth for Greece and for being the primary engineer of Greece's successful bid for membership in the European Union.

Constantine Karamanlis's supporters lauded him as the charismatic Ethnarches .

Constantine 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.