All Greek To Them Trivia Quiz

Answer: Constitutional Monarchy

Constantine II was the last official "King of Greece" and he ruled Greece from 1964 until the monarchy was abolished in 1973. Constantine married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark and was thus both King of Greece and Prince Consort of Denmark. Initially the Greek people seemed taken with the young and highly charismatic King; but his reign soon became one of unrest as economic problems plagued the country's economy. Constantine's coronation came at the same time as the left of center Central Union Party (EK) took control of Parliament after a decade of rule by the right of center and royalist supporting National Radical Union Party (ERE). Constantine and the leaders of EK fight over the power of the monarch became an added stress to the poltical turmoil that gripped the country over the next three years. In 1967 both Constantine and the EK were surprised when Georgios Papadopoulos led a group of junior army officers in a takeover of the government. This "coup" left Constantine as head of state, but with little ability to effect anything since the army and surprisingly a majority of Greeks supported the new junta. Constantine saved face by reluctantly agreeing to inaugurate the junta government while planning a disastrous counter-coup in December 1967. Upon the failure of this action the King was forced to flee the country. Constantine remained a "King in Exile" until June 1973, when the junta abolished the monarchy and the existing constitution, declaring Greece a republic. Even after the junta was removed in 1974 the Greek electorate voted almost 3 to 1 abolish the monarchy.

Since leaving Greece in 1967 Constantine has rarely been permitted to travel back to Greece. In 1994 a law was passed stripping the former king of citizenship unless he agreed to add a last name to his passport, Constantine refused to use any other name than "Constantine, King of the Hellenes" and was this stripped of citizenship. The former royal family has since been allowed to return to Greece as private citizens and maintains homes in London and Copenhagen as well as Greece.

Answer: Presidential Parliamentary Republic

Greece's long history has seen all types of poltical systems and models. Classic Athenian democracy was a form of "direct democracy" where political decisions were made by vote of each eligible voter (citizen/male/over 21/owner of property in Athens for example). Alexander the Great ruled Greece as an "absolute monarch" as did the Roman Emperors and Ottoman Emirs thereafter. Greece's presidential based parliamentary republic is similar to other European systems of this era.

A President is elected directly by the nation and manages the executive branch of the government. Presidential powers are tightly defined and limited as the majority of policy decisions are determined by the parliamentary legislature.

The party or coalition of parties that can organize a majority of legislators names the Prime Minister who then sets the ministers to manage the administrative branch of the government.

A separate judicial branch exists to administer justice, through judges appointed by the President for life from a list of national school of judge graduates.

Answer: Melina Mercouri

Melina Mercouri was born Maria Amalia Mercouri in Athens in 1920. Ms. Mercouri came from a political family as her father was Stamatis Mercouris, a member of the Greek Parliament (Democratic Socialist Party of Greece) and former Minister for Public Order. Mercouri's grandfather, Spyridon Merkouris, was a popular local politician and former Mayor of Athens. Ms. Mercouri graduated from the Greek National Theatre's Drama School in 1944 and joined the National Theatre of Greece where she was a successful theater actress during the 1940's and 1950's. Her first movie was Stella (1955), directed by Michael Cacoyannis, who later directed "Zorba the Greek". Mercouri received special praise at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival for her work in "Stella". At Cannes that year Mercouri met American film director Jules Dassin who persuaded Mercouri to act in movies in English. Dassin and Mecouri were married in 1966 and stayed together for the rest of Melina's life. Melina gained international fame when she starred in "Never on Sunday" (1960), directed by and co-starring Dassin. Mercouri earned the Best Actress Award at 1960's Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the both the US Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Actress. After her first international success, she went on to star in a number of popular films in the 1960's including Phaedra (1962) and Topkapi (1964).

In 1967 after a military coup removed the king and displaced the parliamentary government, Mercouri used her international fame to highlight the political turmoil in Greece. The Greek Junta stripped Mercouri of citizenship for her efforts and allegedly supported an assassination attempt to silence the actress. Mercouri kept up her call to end the dictatorship and used money earned from musical recording sales, concerts and films to support anti-Junta causes. After the fall of the Junta in 1974, Mercouri returned to Greece and was a founding member of the center-left PanHellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), where she was a member of the party's Central Committee. Mercouri was elected to Parliament in 1977. In 1981 PASAOK gained a majority of the seats in Parliament and formed the government, Mercouri was appointed Minister for Culture, being the first female in that post. She would serve in that position for two terms until 1989 and returned in 1993 serving until her death in 1994.

Answer: 1981

Greece joined the European Union (formerly the European Communities) as the tenth member state in 1981. Greece adopted the European currency (euro) in 2001. Greece's membership in the EU has not been without controversy. Greek influence had been a leading factor in the defeat of initiatives to add Turkey to the Union throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Greece also became embroiled in a dispute with the Republic of Macedonia over whether the country formed from the breakup of Yugoslavia could lay claim to the name of the historic region of Greece famed for producing Alexander the Great.

Answer: 7

Greek political divisions can get complicated and frankly seem to change every few years making it hard to keep up. Historically Greece was divided into nine regions and sub-divide into 54 prefectures. The nine "regions" corresponded roughly to the Ancient Greek city-states of Central Greece (Athens), Thrace, Peloponnesus (Sparta), Thessaly, Macedonia, Ionian Islands, Aegean Islands, Epirus and Crete. This system was largely used until 1987 when Greece adopted a 13 region alignment with an additional autonomous religious state for the 20 monastaries located near Mount Athos. In 1997 these regional governments were given greater local authority; but in 2010 the system was changed again under an ambitious program called the "Kallikratis plan" that expanded further both the layers of local government and the power of the local elected officials.

The Kallikratis plan keeps the thirteen regions, but adds a new layer of government of seven "administrative districts". To best understand how this regional government system works we need to start from the ground up. The most direct level of government arew the 325 municipalities (comparable to American or English cities). These municipalities are governed by an elected local mayor. The municipality can be quite large, such as Athens which has over 650,000 people, or as small as 140 people in the municipality of Agathonisi (a small island in the Aegean Region). The municipalities are then divided into the thirteen regions. The regions are governed by an elected Regional Governor and an elected Regional Council who serve five year terms. The 13 regions are then grouped into seven administrative districts. These administrative districts are decentralized and semi-autonomous political units governed by General Secretary, appointed by the central government and advised by a council drawn from the regional governors and local municipalities.

Answer: 1

The "Vouli ton Ellinon" (translated as the "Council of the Greeks") is the single unicameral legislative parliament of Greece. The Hellenic Parliament, as it is commonly called, represents the citizens of Greece through 300 elected Members of Parliament (MP). MPs are elected for a four-year term through a complicated system proportional representation and at large representatives that allocates 50 MP's to the largest vote-getting party to help ensure that the election produces some viable majority to form a government. From 1975 until 2009 the Greek parliament was dominated by one of two political parties, either the center-right New Democracy Party (ND) or the center left Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). Smaller or largely regionally based parties were discouraged due to a constitutional requirement that a party receive at least three percent of the national popular vote in order to seat members.

In the Parliamentary elections held in 2009, five parties entered parliament showing an increasingly fragmented electorate, as center parties ND and PASOK were joined by The Communist Coalition of Greece (KKE), the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) and the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS).

In the 2012 elections, further splintering occurred as two additional parties, Golden Dawn a neo-fascist rightist party and Independent Greeks a party opposed to the recent Greek austerity program reforms reached the three percent threshold.

Answer: Civil War

In October 1944 during the waning days of the Nazi government, occupying German forces in Greece were pulled out of the country. The strong Greek opposition to the Germans immediately began to squabble and position for the post war power vacuum. The German occupation had been resisted by two main Greek forces, the communist-controlled EAM-ELAS ("National Liberation Front-National-Popular Liberation Army") and the EDES ("Greek Democratic National Army"). The two groups did not act jointly but did manage to coexist during the war. In addition a Greek government in exile lead by King George II tried to maintain some semblance of relevancy from outside the country. In early 1944, EAM-ELAS set up a provisional government in the Greek mountains disowning the King and his parliament in exile. When the German's left Greece both the communists and royalist factions were brought together by the British to form a coalition government. This government disintegrated a few weeks later when the communists refused to demilitarize. Both sides took to the streets and a bitter war raged between the groups for two years. Only the presence of British military forces managed to suppress the in-fighting. The royalists were better equipped and financed and the communists accepted defeat and disarmament at a conference in February 1945.

A general election was held in Greece in March 1946. The communists and their followers abstained from the voting, however, and a royalist majority was returned. After a popular vote in September 1946 the Greek king was restored to the throne. The return of the monarchy became the scapegoat for the resurgent communists to refuse to participate in the government and instead launch a full-scale revolt. Royalist aid had shifted from Britain to the US in the interim. The US, deep in the throes of the Cold War was immediately concerned about the effect on Western Europe and NATO should Greece "fall" to the communists. The US supplied both military and economic aid to Greece to match aid to the communist forces from The USSR and its Eastern Bloc allies. This second phase of the Civil War ended in October 1949, when the U.S.-supplied (and possibly augmented) Greek army managed to harass the rebels so that many of the remaining communist fighters fled the country into neighboring Albania. The truncated Greek Civil War cost an estimated 100,000 lives and displaced nearly a million Greeks from their homes due to the fighting.

Answer: 1952

The "Birthplace of Democracy" as Greece is often called did not grant woman the right to vote until 1952. Ancient Athens for example permitted only men who were citizens to vote. Citizenship for voting purposes, depending on the period, was limited to property owners or persons who could establish birth from two Athenian parents. Even today Greece lags behind most of Europe in recognizing the equal rights of woman. The law requiring a marriage dowry was not repealed until 1983. The percentage of women in Greece's government, trade union leadership and political parties routinely ranks Greece at the bottom of female representation in EU. In all of its long history there is no record of a Greek woman ever holding supreme leadership in the country.

As an example of how far women must still travel to earn equality in Greece, the autonomous religious region of Mount Athos doesn't even let woman live or visit near the 20 monasteries that are under the control of the Greek Orthodox Church. Theoretically as part of an EU member state, Mount Athos should be subject to all EU laws, including EU recognition of equal gener rights. However an exception was made for the Greek monks and the centuries old refusal to admit women persists.

Answer: Ottoman (Turkish)

Greek Independence Day is celebrated on March 25, commemorating the start of the 1821 War of Greek Independence from the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The date is also the Greek Orthodox Church's celebration of Annunciation Day, when the Archangel Gabriel was said to have appeared to the Virgin Mary and told her that she was pregnant with Jesus. Greece had been an uneasy and largely unassimilated part of the Ottoman Empire since 1453, when the Turks captured Constantinople and ended the Byzantine Empire. The Greek revolt was precipitated by Bishop Germanos of Patras who raised a Greek nationalist flag over the Monastery of Agia Lavra in the Peloponnese. Allegedly the Bishop shouted "Freedom or Death" from the monastery's walls and this phrase became the motto of the revolution.

The Greeks had some early successes on the battlefield, even capturing Athens in June 1822. But by 1827 Athens and most of the Greek isles had been recaptured by the Turks. An international coalition of Great Britain, France, and Russia, the so-called Great Powers, intervened in the conflict as the Greek struggle, both as a means to weaken the Ottomans and as a public relations move, since the Greek freedom plight created great sympathy from poets and leading European intellectuals (most notably English poet Lord Byron). The Greeks aided by the naval forces of the "Great Powers" won a decisive naval victory at Navarino in 1827 destroying an Ottoman fleet. Fighting and political maneuvering continued off and on for another five years until the Turks agreed to full Greek sovereignty in the Treaty of Constantinople in 1832.

Answer: Coup d'etat

On 21 April 1967 a group of rightist army officers led by Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos seized power in a coup d'état establishing the "Regime of the Colonels". Papadopoulos immediately placed the country on martial law and suspended civil liberties and political parties were dissolved. Once in power the "Colonels" or "Junta" sought to weed out dissidents by exiling thousands of alleged communists and imprisoning political opponents. Given the Junta's determination to remain staunchly anti-communist, NATO and the US accepted the new government despite the brutality and violence of the takeover.

The regime's internal standing was greatly benefitted during its early years from the marked upturn in the Greek economy; and while condemned abroad was well liked inside Greece during the years of economic growth.

When the economy slowed after 1970 the regime's popularity dropped. By 1973 the ruling group of former Colonels was facing armed insurrection in the Athenian streets. Papadopoulos was replaced by Dimitrios Ioannidis, another of the original conspirators. Ioannidis cracked down even harder on dissidents and attempted to expand Greece's borders abroad. Ioannidis moved too aggressively and even attempted in July 1974 to overthrow the President of Cyprus as a step to virtually annex the Island for Greece.

This venture nearly caused a war with Turkey. Soon senior military officers lost support for Ioannidis and instead decided to accede to international pressure and hold open elections for a new constitutional democracy that remains in place today.