Alepochori is a village in the Evros regional unit, East Macedonia and Thrace, Greece. The village is considered very old and its inhabitants are native Greeks.
Geographical data The village is located right on the Greek–Bulgarian border (300 m from the last houses). The village was recognized as a community in 1929, coming from the community of Metaxades, while in 1956 the settlement of Polia was annexed to it. In 1997, the community was not recognized anymore and was annexed to the Municipality of Metaxades. Since 2010 and till today, it is a community of the Municipality of Didymoteicho.
Name Various legends are said that in the village there was a Turkish Aga who took the brides on the first night of their marriage, in his own house. The villagers slyly managed to send someone to the Constantinople to protest to the sultan, who acquitted them and fired Aga. Leaving the village, the Aga called the inhabitants "foxes" and so the village got its name.
History Alepochori is one of the first and oldest settlements of the region of Evros. Its first inhabitants numbered 300 and the houses 50. In short, it already existed in the Byzantine era but cholera caused the villagers to rebuild the village down the hill. A few years later, it was conquered by the Ottomans. In 1770 the village was set on fire and looted by the Turks because of a failed revolution attempt by the Greeks in Morea. But the residents of the surrounding villages helped to rebuild the village. It was liberated in 1920.
The village during the Byzantine Empire From the historical testimonies that exist as well as from the tradition in the village it seems that Alepochori is one of the oldest villages in the area of Didymoteicho. Tradition has it that the village was very large with about 800 houses.
At the edge of the village near "tsisme" lived a monk all alone. The inhabitants preserved him by offering him food. At that time there was a big bazaar in the place "Gialadarki". There was a big fountain there. The water came with "kiougia" from the area of today's chapel of Agia Paraskevi. The kiosks were found with recent excavations. One day a woman from the village did not get food to the monk. Then he cursed her and with her the whole village. After a couple of days, the residents were hit by cholera and many people died. Most are buried in the "Ampelia" where cemeteries are still preserved. Many residents left and only seven families remained. Gradually, however, the village grew again. Two cobbled streets survive to this day and led to the old church and to the "tsisme".
The village during the Ottoman Empire During the Turkish occupation, the village was called: "Bas Kara Bunar" which means "Black Deep Well". According to the elders, the water of the wells that existed was black and bitter. Outside the Christian-inhabited village, which was very large because tiles, stones and kiosks for water (which testify to its size) were constantly being discovered, and about a kilometer away there was a Turkish village where Bey was staying with his guard, among other Turks. The Turkish village was exactly where the border line that separates the village from Bulgaria is today. The old village that was at the crossroads, from Ortakioi to Didymoteicho.
The oppression by the Turks had been on a daily basis, with all the known consequences (devşirme, confiscation of goods, taxes, etc.). One of the worst troubles of the inhabitants by the Turks was that: In the old days the bride who would get married on Sunday night was taken by a Turk. He kept her for three days and then gave her to the groom. This fact had become the fear and terror and the most humiliating act of any young couple getting married. The bride was going through hours of mass rape and humiliation of her personality. This lasted for many years. At some point, however, the young people of the village could not stand any more.
A committee of three young men agreed and decided to start from the village and reach Constantinople, where the sultan's headquarters were located. Through the Turkish outposts and villages entering Eastern Thrace after many days they arrived in Constantinople. On the day they arrived in Constantinople, tradition says, there was an event attended by the sultan. The edges of the road were full of people. They went to an "Armeni" (According to the Greek vernacular, Armenedes were the traders and craftsmen scattered from their cradle, within the Ottoman Empire) in Constantinople and asked for help on what to do to get rid of this habit. The "Armenis" advised them to take a brazier with burning coals, and to put them on their heads and turn around. "The sultan will call you and you will talk to him," he told them. Indeed, the sultan called them and asked them why they had the braziers on their heads. They said to him, "My king, as the fire burns in the brazier, so our head burns." And they told him what was going on and what they were going through.
The Sultan then became enraged and ordered a Turkish officer with a strong guard to visit the village and if what was told to him really happened to punish them. At the time when the young people were getting ready to leave, after thanking him, he asked them to answer his question, how they managed to reach the City, without being noticed by the Turkish guards. They told him that they had come with many precautions, hiding and misleading the soldiers in various sly ways. Then the sultan called them "tilkiler" (foxes) and since then the village has been given the Turkish name: "Tilkikkoy".
When the young men returned to the village, they told the villagers everything and waited for the arrival of the Turkish officer with his guard to investigate the matter. He came disguised as a tobacco merchant and told them that "we in our villages do this and that to the Greeks". They were discouraged and told him they were doing even worse things to the Greeks. The representative returned to Edirne and reported to the sultan everything that was going on. The sultan sent an army and burned the whole village of Gunekli. There were no Turks left. Only the Greeks who built Alepochori (Tilkikkoy) remained, that is, a village of the wicked (tilki = fox). Only one Turk survived the massacre and he started the village of Avdella.
There are two other versions. One states that two elderly Turks managed to escape. "Aksakal" which means "white generation" and "Abdullah". They left and founded the villages of "Aksakal" (Polia) and "Abdoula" (Avdella), respectively. However, there is another version. That the Turkish government had settled refugees in the Didymoteicho area from the East and Pakistan (the so-called Matzirides), who founded Turkish villages such as Kiani (Tsiausli), Savra (Subaskioi), Avdoulaki (today's Avdella) Elafochori, Polia and others.
So for many years the village was called "Tilkikkoy" and after the liberation it took the Greek name "Alepochori". There is also the second version that it got its name from the many foxes that existed in the area, but the strongest one is the first that has been transmitted by word of mouth for many years. In historical records, specifically in the year 1910, there is also the name "Kaylıklıköy", however it seems to have been a temporary name. During the Turkish occupation, everything was covered by terror and by slavery. Slavery in the village lasted for many years. It was conquered by the Turks around 1350 when Edirne was conquered.
More recent history of the village Since the 18th century the urban Greek element has been booming economically and spiritually, which can be strongly found in the life of the society and in ecclesiastical architecture and art. In 1893 the school of the village operated for the first time. Later the village was conquered by the Bulgarians.
On 18 March 1914, 15 captives from Belopolyane were slaughtered by the Turks in the village of Alepochori. They took the captives from Akalan (now Belopolyane) to a ravine near the village of Alepochori, where the barbarians' work began. They were slaughtered one by one just like in the slaughterhouse. In front of others. Moments of terror, full of sadness and barbarism. Blood flowed from the hands of the executors, the people continued to be slaughtered even then, as if by a miracle, they shouted loudly to the living "leave!". Just when the 16th was about to be slaughtered, then everyone was scattered in the forest.
In 1920, after the liberation of Thrace, it began to take its modern form. For example, in mid-June 1920, 5–6 Bulgarians and 17 komitatzids attempted to attack the village, from which they stole 64 sheep and goats, 7 cows, 5 oxen and a donkey, while at the same time they brutally abused some residents of the village. In 1922, after the Asia Minor catastrophe, many refugee families came (168 people or 22 families). They built their houses and were given lands for cultivation, from the area. Today, there are only a few refugees in the village. Most have left for Thessaloniki and Athens. The Italian and German occupation left its mark on the village.
Several young men from the village fought in the mountains of Albania in the 1940 war as they did in the Asia Minor catastrophe. A resident of the village, 13 years old at the time, vividly described the day of 28 October 1940: "That day the village was buzzing. The doors and windows were opening and closing banging. People were running in the streets, in the fields, in the pastures, the bell was ringing to alert the villagers about the bad news of the war. There was a general mobilization. They took the classes, recruited horses, cows, sheep, goats for the army, for the front."
The main occupations of the inhabitants around 1940 were agriculture and animal husbandry, with wheat, barley, corn and sesame as the main crops. Today, the same crops continue and canary and bean cultivation was added in 1952.
The community was governed by temporary public workers and there was compulsory participation of men in community projects from the age of 18–20 years, with women not participating. Men and women shared farm and livestock work, with children starting to help from the age of 12–13 years.
The family structure was multi-member and traditional, with the first-born children taking the names of the husband's parents and the subsequent children taking the names of the wife's parents. Marriages were age-based and couples usually stayed at the groom's father's home. The dowry consisted mainly of land, while the inheritance was passed by will, usually after the death of the father, with girls receiving a smaller share than boys.
The village suffered greatly during the 1946–1949 civil war because it was next to Bulgaria. It became the scene of many conflicts in the civil conflict. Many times it was evacuated, it had several victims in the civil war. On 17 June 1947, a group of guerrillas entered Alepochori and burned down the house of a field guard, while he reportedly recruited 35 like-minded people. At the same time, the group was followed by 15 families of the village adjacent to the Communist Party of Greece. But 7 of the alleged deportees returned to the village. They, fearing the possibility of their violent recruitment, had gone into hiding. Shortly after Christmas, a large group of rebels stormed northern Alepochori, near the Bulgarian border, and took food, loaded onto oxcarts and transported it to the G'okche Bunar site, near the border with Bulgaria. On 15 May 1949, the surrounding area of Metaxades was occupied by the guerrillas and so the inhabitants of the villages of Paliouri, Polia, Avdella and Alepochori had settled in Metaxades. After the civil war, the villagers tried to rebuild the village and succeeded.