Kingdom of Greece

Overview

Modern Greek statehood emerged from the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829) against the Ottoman Empire, a struggle romanticised across philhellenic Europe (Byron died at Missolonghi in 1824). The Great Powers — Britain, France and Russia — intervened decisively, destroying the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet at Navarino in 1827. The London Protocol (1830) and the Convention of 1832 established an independent Kingdom of Greece under the Bavarian prince Otto of Wittelsbach, who reigned 1832–1862 as an absolute then constitutional monarch. After Otto's deposition, the Danish prince William became George I (r. 1863–1913), founding the Glücksburg dynasty that ruled, with interruptions, until 1973.

The organising ideology was the Megali Idea ("Great Idea") — the aspiration to unite all ethnic Greeks and revive a Byzantine-scale state centred on Constantinople. Territorial expansion proceeded through the cession of the Ionian Islands (1864), Thessaly (1881), the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 (gains of Macedonia, Epirus, Crete), and the aftermath of the First World War. The catastrophe came in Anatolia: after landing at Smyrna in 1919, Greek forces were routed by Kemalist Turkey, culminating in the burning of Smyrna and the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and the associated compulsory Greco-Turkish population exchange uprooted approximately 1.2 million Orthodox Christians from Anatolia and around 400,000 Muslims from Greece, reshaping the demography of both states.

Political instability — the "National Schism" between the Venizelist republicans and the royalists — produced repeated coups. A republic was declared in 1924 (the Second Hellenic Republic), the monarchy restored by plebiscite in 1935, and in 1936 General Ioannis Metaxas established the authoritarian, corporatist "4th of August Regime." Greece repelled Italy's 1940 invasion but fell to German forces in 1941; the Axis occupation brought famine (the Great Famine of 1941–42 killed an estimated 300,000) and the near-total destruction of Greek Jewry, especially the Sephardic community of Thessaloniki (over 45,000 deported to Auschwitz). Liberation in 1944 slid into the Greek Civil War (1946–1949) between the government and the communist Democratic Army, an early Cold War proxy conflict in which the US Truman Doctrine (1947) underwrote the royalist side. Greece joined NATO in 1952. A military junta ("the Colonels") seized power in 1967, abolished the monarchy in 1973, and collapsed in 1974 after the Cyprus crisis, ushering in the current Third Hellenic Republic.

Present status (Sept 2026)

Greece is a parliamentary republic. President Konstantinos Tasoulas (New Democracy) took office 13 March 2025, having been elected by parliament on 12 February 2025 (160 of 300 votes). Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (New Democracy) has governed since June 2023 (first term from July 2019); his government announced a roughly €2 billion cost-of-living package at Thessaloniki in September 2026 ahead of elections expected in 2027.