During which period did the 'Regime of the Colonels' rule Greece?

The 'Greek junta' or 'Regime of the Colonels' was a series of far-right military juntas that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. On 21 April 1967, a group of colonels overthrew the caretaker government a month before scheduled elections which Georgios Papandreou's Center Union was favored to win. The dictatorship was characterised by right-wing cultural policies, restrictions on civil liberties, and the imprisonment, torture, and exile of political opponents. An attempt to renew its support in a 1973 referendum on the monarchy and gradual democratisation was ended by another coup by hardliner Dimitrios Ioannidis. The junta's rule ended on 24 July 1974 under the pressure of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, leading to the Metapolitefsi ("regime change") to democracy and the establishment of the Third Hellenic Republic.

The colonels preferred to call the coup an 'Ethnosotirios Epanastasis' ('revolution to save the nation'). Their official justification was that a "communist conspiracy" had infiltrated Greece's bureaucracy, academia, press, and military, to such an extent that drastic action was needed to protect the country from communist takeover.

Long-standing political freedoms and civil liberties, that had been taken for granted and enjoyed by the Greek people for decades, were instantly suppressed. Article 14 of the Greek Constitution, which protected freedom of thought and freedom of the press, was immediately suspended.