By the first years of the 1970s, dictatorship had succeeded in stabilizing its position. It used violence and persecutions to suppress the action of resistance organizations and had managed to actually isolate the former politicians. Nevertheless, it was quite difficult to define its future course. Given the fact that a violent overthrow of the dictatorship was not very probable, despite certain individual resistance activities (Panagoulis, resistance organizations, the Navy Movement), the prospective controlled liberalization of the regime was the aim of the ‘revolutionary’ government members and of political personalities.

Under these circumstances, students constituted the only social environment, where mass anti-dictatorial movements took place. The leading manifestation of resistance was the uprising at the Polytechneio (the National Technical University of Athens) in November 1973, in a period that the regime intensified its efforts of liberalization (the fabricated plebiscite of 1973, the Markezinis government). The violent suppression of the student uprising denoted the exacerbation of conflicts and the rift among the architects of the coup (Ioannidis regime), thus putting an end to any perspective of liberalization. This development complicated even more the position of the country on an international scale. In this climate of increasing international isolation and general discontent in the interior of the country the fatal mistake of the junta, that led to its downfall, was the subversion of the President of the Cypriot Democracy, archbishop Makarios.

At the same time Turkey suddenly invaded Cyprus (Attila I), in July 1974, leading all authority institutions in Greece to an impasse. The awareness of the crucial situation and of the possibility of war between Greece and Turkey led military officers to concede the power to politicians once again. At a time like this, the appointment of Konstantinos Karamanlis as prime minister and the formation of a National Unity government seemed the only reliable way out of the crisis. The military junta had been overthrown and democracy was being restored in Greece after a seven-year adventure.