This is CBS. I am the world. I'm John Bachelors. The passing of a king, King Constantine II of the Helines is dead.

He, however, is a way of telling the story of Greece and Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean back in the 1970s.

Gregory Coppola, a veteran publisher of Defense and Foreign Affairs, is helping me to understand what I wandered through, because I traveled in Greece and Turkey, right prior to the Greek Turkish War of 1974 over Cyprus.

And should have understood there was tension building towards outright conflict that has not been settled to this day. Cyprus is divided bitterly between Greek and Turkish forces.

However, we now come to the passing of the king. Gregory, it was that time frame, 73, 74, where the kings as head of state was replaced by what a republic, is that what they called it, although it was strong man republic.

What happened in 73, 74 that changed the direction of Greece then, and what does it mean today with the passing of the king?

Well, the king's passing was profound because it really revived all of these memories of what really led to the end of the monarchy in Greece, or at least the end of the time being of the monarchy in Greece.

He had only been king for a short period of time, basically, about 10 years by the time the military hunter staged the April 21, 1967 coup, and they abolished the monarchy subsequently, largely because the king tried to lead a counter coup against the colonels who had staged the coup.

So when it became clear that the counter coup against the colonels had failed and that democracy had not been restored, the king then left the country and went into exile personally and then into Britain.

And as a result, the colonels organized what was clearly a fake referendum on July 29, 1973, suggesting that the country should become a republic and that the monarchy be abolished.

Of course, when you're running all ends of the referendum, you actually can win the referendum many way you like. So they declared the republic, the king was out of the country.

Now he was literally still regarded as the king of Greece or the king of the Helines.

But when the colonels continued to blunder and caused themselves to go into this war with Turkey over Cyprus, then the colonels government collapsed and civilian government was restored.

Now, the interesting thing is that the new conservative government of prime minister Constantine Caravanless, which came to power until either 24th, 1934, decided to hold another referendum on the matter, given that the referendum held by the hunter was considered invalid.

Now Caravanless had always been personally feuding with the king and the king's wife and he wanted the power, he didn't want the king to come back. So he knew how to black the colonels, you had a shape of referendum.

So he held a referendum on December 8th, 1934 and abolished the monarchy once again. So he was banned from the king was banned from returning to Greece for a long period of time.

And there was only in the later years that he was able to come back Caravanless having gone into exile and the like.

So we see this current government in Greece, which is also a conservative government, literally this the the follow on to the Caravanless government of old by Kiryako smits attack is.

Very declined to hold a state funeral for the late king, not because of anything which would have banned it. The constitution in fact says that a former head of state is entitled to a state funeral.

But what we've got coming up in Greece this year in the coming months is another election and prime minister, it's attacked is afraid that if he gave a state funeral to a former king, the communist would oppose it and that would actually cost him votes in the coming election.

So basically it was an active political cowardice that he didn't give respect to the king who had tried to preserve democracy in the in the seventies who had fought with his family in World War two and the like to when they went into exile with the Nazis coming into Greece.

They fought against the Germans and Italians and they went into exile in Egypt and then continued their fight against the Nazis. He was a great hero of Greece and yet he's been denied a state funeral.

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