The Coup That Collapsed

To the astonishment of a handful of passengers waiting at Rome's Ciampino Airport at 4 a.m., squads of Italian police suddenly materialized and took up positions around the field. Moments later, a white turboprop jet taxied to a stop on the apron. In the plane's door way appeared a young man in the red-trimmed uniform of a field marshal.

Limping slightly from fatigue, his face ashen and heavily bearded, King Constantine of Greece, 27, walked down a ramp onto Italian soil. Behind him, glum and red-eyed, came his Danish wife, Queen Anne-Marie, 25, her mink coat still smelling of the mothballs from which she had hastily removed it. With them were their two infant children, Queen Mother Frederika, the King's 25-year-old sister Irene, and several loyal followers.

Thus last week, after an abortive royal countercoup that may go down as one of the most inept conspiracies in history, the King of the Hellenes fled his country, leaving in control more firmly than ever the military junta that had seized power last April in a lightning coup. Even if the King or one of his family should be enticed back to Greece by the junta, which seems to feel that it needs the royal family for constitutional window dressing, Greece's 134-year-old monarchy had suffered a setback that deprived it of what little power and prestige it had.

Time to Act. The King had chafed for months under Greece's military rulers, led by Colonel George Papadopoulos. He had originally gone along with the coup in hopes that he could exercise a moderating influence on the zealous colonels. But his advice was largely ignored as the junta enacted scores of restrictive laws, banned mini skirts and beatniks' beards, clamped an iron censorship on the press, and sent hundreds of Greeks to prison on such charges as "speaking ill of the authorities" and playing the music of out lawed leftist composers. Constantine waited, hoping for the proper moment to spring a countercoup that would oust the junta and re-establish parliamentary rule in Greece.

For the young King, that moment seemed to have arrived last week. As he saw it, the junta had lost face in Greece by bowing to Turkish demands to pull out 8,000 Greek troops from Cyprus -- though its willingness to compromise had undoubtedly prevented a war and an irreparable rupture in NATO.

From his self-imposed exile in Paris, for mer Premier Constantine Karamanlis had heated up the political climate by calling on the junta to step down. Politicians on both the right and left sent the King secret assurances of their support, should he make a move. His advisers, mostly retired generals, assured him that the military would obey his commands. Furthermore, Constantine sensed a growing threat to what was left of his royal power. He may also have feared that the new constitution that was being prepared under junta guidance would strip the crown of the power of appointing and dismissing Premiers, the King's most potent prerogative.

Yet Constantine's coup turned out to be little short of a comedy of errors. A few days before his target date, he ordered Olympic Airways to place two planes at his disposal--a tip-off to the junta's ubiquitous secret police that the King had some travel in mind. His method of heralding the coup was even less auspicious: he simply sat down at his palace desk in the Athens suburb of Tatoi and wrote a letter to Lieut. General Odysseus Anghelis, the army chief of staff and a junta supporter. In it, the King told the general that he had taken full charge of the government and armed forces, and warned him not to take orders from anyone else.

While a messenger was dispatched with the letter, the King bundled his royal clan, along with Premier Constantine Kollias and the commander of the air force, aboard the two planes at Tatoi airbase and took off for the north of Greece, where the bulk of Greece's 118,000-man army is concentrated along the Turkish border. Constantine's plan, such as it was, called for assuming command of those troops and making a triumphant march southward that would scare the junta into quitting.

Triumphal Reception. At first it seemed as if his plan might succeed. As his plane landed at the seaport town of Kavalla, 200 miles north of Athens, royalist army officers greeted him and put him aboard a helicopter for a flight to the town square, which was filled with a cheering crowd. Some men lifted the King to their shoulders and carried him in triumph to the town hall, where he spoke to the crowd from a balcony. Cupping his hands like a megaphone, he shouted, "United we shall win! United we shall win!" Then, accompanied by two tanks that rumbled along as a guard of honor, Constantine went to a local radio station and recorded a 15-minute speech. Royalist pilots flew the tape south to Larissa, a town in central Greece that had the only available transmitter.

"Greeks," the recorded speech said, "the moment has come for you to hear the voice of your King. Today I put an end to anomaly and violence. I ask the Greek people to assist me in re-establishing the moral values that were born in this land. The change that takes place today will not allow the prevalence of a spirit of revenge against those who committed errors. But I wish to make it clear to all that I will no longer tolerate any disobedience, which will be stamped out mercilessly."

It was a fairly stirring call to arms. Unfortunately, few Greeks heard it. Constantine had lacked the foresight--or the troops--to seize control of a regular radio station, and his message went out only on a weak short-wave station that was almost inaudible in Athens.

Tipped off about the coup by the King's letter to General Anghelis, the junta reacted swiftly, with military precision. Shoppers in Athens were startled to see armored personnel carriers take up positions around government buildings. Troops appeared on rooftops. Other military units set up a defense line north of Athens in case the King marched south. All telephone and telegraph circuits to the north were cut off. Athens remained totally quiet, and there was no report of any uprising anywhere in the south on behalf of the King. The junta radio boomed out messages for calm and claims that the situation was well in hand.

Bad News. Its claims were ridiculed by the small group around Constantine in the north. In Kavalla, Queen Anne-Marie and Queen Mother Frederika kissed the King goodbye and waved him off as he climbed aboard a helicopter for a short flight to the town of Alexandropolis to stir up more support. He returned in midafternoon and took off almost immediately for Salonica, where handbills proclaiming his coup had been dropped from air force planes. While he was in the air, he received the news that Salonica was under junta control. As he turned back to Kavalla, he faced a shattering situation. In its months in power, the junta had carefully placed junior officers loyal to it on all general staffs, just in case their commanding officers should prove too royalist. Now a young major named Nicholas Petanis had raced from a base on the Greco-Turkish border to Kavalla and brought a column of tanks with him. He and other junior officers loyal to the junta arrested the three generals who were the King's chief supporters. That ended Constantine's coup. The major gave the King a choice: return to Athens or flee.

"My strength is the love of the people," is the motto of the Glicksburg dynasty from which Constantine springs. No Greek king should take it too seriously. The army is the royal source of strength in Greece. Constantine had on his side some of the generals who had won their stars by royal favor, but he underestimated the degree to which the junta had won the junior officers over to its side. Constantine also miscalculated his own popularity among the people. Danes, not Greeks, the royal family draws a $566,000 annual income in a land that, despite recent economic progress, remains one of Europe's poorest. The royal way of life--a swirl of parties and yachting with Athens' small Establishment of shipowners and industrialists--is a source of resentment to the average Greek. Most resented is Queen Mother Frederika, who is regarded by most Greeks as an incurable meddler in the country's politics. Since the April coup, Greeks had rallied to Constantine mainly because the crown was the one legal institution that the junta had not destroyed; Greek politicians looked to Constantine to steer the counry back to representative government. But he did not command the love or devotion that makes men willing to die for a king.

After reaching Rome, the King spent the day at the Greek embassy, then moved his family into the nearby villa of his cousin, Prince Henry of Hesse. While the royal ladies called in Rome Designer Federico Fourquet and ordered warmer clothes for the colder climate, King Constantine got on with what his father, Paul, once called the business of kingship. He refused to make any public statement, explained to friends that he was still "working to save my country." He made it plain that he would not under any circumstance abdicate, and that he as King still represented Greece's only legitimate government. He met with U.S. Ambassador to Italy G. Frederick Reinhardt and urged that, to give him leverage, the U.S. withhold its recognition from the junta government. He reportedly telephoned Karamanlis in Paris, and members of the King's small entourage conferred with representatives of George Papandreou's Center Union Party about the possibility of setting up a government in exile.

In the wake of the coup, which had been suppressed without bloodshed, the junta arrested a score of leading politicians who were suspected of conspiring with the King, put old George Papandreou back under house arrest, and seized several of the King's staff members. But toward the King himself the junta acted with restraint. At a press conference, Colonel Papadopoulos, who had taken over as Premier, insisted that the King had been misled. Had he known what the King was up to? Replied Papadopoulos: "Had I known, I personally--and the others--would have tried to enlighten him and not let him go astray." Papadopoulos refused to speculate about the King's motivation. Said he: "If there were in this world a way to interpret illogicality by logic, I would have an answer."

The junta insisted that it would retain the monarchy and appointed as temporary regent Lieut. General George Zoetakis, who was sworn in by Archbishop Leronymos, formerly the chaplain of the royal family and the King's personal confessor. Pictures of the King and Queen, which had been taken down from government offices in the first hours of the countercoup, were put back in their accustomed places. Orthodox priests were ordered to retain the passages about the King and royal family in their Sunday prayers.

Diplomatic Snub. In fact, the junta at week's end openly declared that it would welcome the King's return. Explained Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos: "The King left on his own, and he may return on his own." The junta was not, of course, acting out of affection for the young monarch. Because Constantine is Greece's head of state and recognized as such by all other nations, his departure stripped the regime of its cherished veneer of legitimacy. Not one single foreign country offered to recognize the new regime, and in a calculated diplomatic snub, the ambassadors of Britain, France, Italy, West Germany and the U.S. even refused to heed a summons from Papadopoulos to drop by for a briefing. A lack of recognition would mean a cutoff in aid programs, a disruption of trade, and a general discomfiture for the sensitive colonels, who badly want to be accepted by the Western nations.

The junta's civilian Foreign Minister Panayotis Pipinelis stopped over in Rome on his return from the NATO meeting in Brussels to talk with the King. Not ignoring more lofty influences, the junta sent Archbishop Leronymos to reason with Constantine. There was some speculation that the King's sister, Princess Irene, might go back as a royal standin. But the King so far seemed disinclined to return, fearing that his position would be reduced still further to that of a mere figurehead. Even so, having failed in his open revolt against the junta, the King could yet decide that, by returning, he might once again stand before his people as an advocate of constitutional rule--a role that would be difficult to assume in exile.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.