Ioannidis, Cyprus, and the irony of history

On 16 August 2010, Dimitrios Ioannidis, one of the instigators of the April 1967 coup that brought the Greek Colonels to power, died. During the seven-year reign of the ‘junta’, Brigadier Ioannidis was director of the Greek military police (ΕΣΑ), and he was known as one of the hardliners of the regime. He rose to prominence in November 1973, when he masterminded, behind the scenes, a new coup that put an end to the liberalising efforts initiated by Georgios Papadopoulos, under the so-called ‘Markezinis experiment’.