Frangoulis Frangos was dismissed as the military’s chief of staf on 1 November
2011 in a surprise reshule of the Greek military leadership, one of the most
sweeping personnel changes in recent years. Until then, however, the political authorities of the Ministry of National Defence had seen him accumulate
“tremendous power” within the army, where he “promoted his own men in the
Intelligence Division, in large formations and in critical units around Athens”.80
As chief of the General Staf, Frangos had prepared an operational plan regarding a possible destabilization of Athens by “gangs [of foreign criminals]
armed with AK-47s”. He had also warned about the potential “radicalization” of
immigrants from an increase in “illegal immigration”. He purportedly clashed
with the defence minister in early 2011 because he had not informed the latter about “Callimachus”, a military exercise in domestic crowd suppression organized under NATO auspices, because, according to Frangos himself, he had
wanted to prevent any leaks to the press. (Frangos also later served briely as
interim minister of national defence in the caretaker government during the
weeks between the two elections of spring 2012.)
The Vima report is signiicant in multiple ways. In the midst of a serious political crisis,
and for the irst time since the “pyjama coup”, one of the leading and traditionally pro-government newspapers in the country linked the military to plans for a
coup, while pointing to it as a political “actor” in the context of a severe political crisis. One year later, this article has yet to be oicially denied, suggesting
that in the military, as in all aspects of the Greek institutional “superstructure”,
the Changeover dynamic has been radically reversed – with all the dangers this
implies for the Constitution.
3/
THE MILITARY AS AN INTERNATIONAL AND
NATIONAL POLICE FORCE
While a military that undertakes “police” duties is not a Greek particularity,
and does not in itself pose issues of constitutional aberration, it does deine
a working framework and a “project description” for the military that points
to public order rather than to national defence, moving the military out of
the camps and lionizing military oicers – as we saw in Frangos’ case – in
new ields.
On this basis, let us have a look at some more recent developments. On 2 April 2013,
the special forces of the 71st Airborne Brigade were ordered out of the area
of Kilkis, where they are based at Nea Santa, and found themselves deployed
in central Athens inside the Ministry of National Defence, to face of against
protests by unpaid workers from the Skaramagas shipyards. There had been an
earlier active military deployment at the ministry in October 2012, when during
another protest “assault” the shipyard workers reached the ministry’s central
building. Similar scenes occurred at other times during protests by retired mili-
80.
See http://www.tovima.gr/politics/article/?aid=477182.
MAPPING ULTRA-RIGHT EXTREMISM, XENOPHOBIA AND RACISM WITHIN THE GREEK STATE APPARATUS
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