Avas, Greece

Avas or Avantas (Greek, Modern: Άβαντας, Katharevoussa: Άβας, Bulgarian: Дервент, Turkish and Bulgarian Romanization: Dervent) is a village in the southwestern part of the Evros Prefecture in Greece. Avantas is located 10 km north of Alexandroupoli, east of Thessaloniki and northeast of the Greek capital Athens. Avantas is linked with the road connecting the Egnatia Odos (E90 - Igoumenitsa - Thessaloniki - Alexandroupoli) and the GR-2 (Alexandroupoli - Thessaloniki). Its 2001 population was 238 for the village and 497 for the village.

Nearest places

 * Aisymi, north
 * Alexandroupoli, south

History
The village was founded by the Ottoman Turks. Its inhabitants were 3/4 Bulgarian and 1/4 Turkish until the annexation of Greece from Bulgaria in 1920 and the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). According to professor Lyubomir Miletich, the 1912 population contained 320 exarchist Bulgarian families. Refugees east of the Evros river and from Asia Minor arrived into the village. Its Turkish originated name changed its name to its current Greek form Avas and later Avantas afterwards. After World War II and the Greek Civil War, many of its buildings were rebuilt. Electricity and automobiles arrived in the 1960s, it was linked with pavement in the late-20th century, television arrived in the 1980s. Internet and computers arrived in the late-1990s. The village's lost three fourths of its population between 1981 and 1991 and two thirds between 1991 and 2001 totaling to four fifths between 1981 and 2001, its inhabitants left for the larger cities and outside Greece.

People

 * Mitro Karabeljata, Revolutionary leader and strategist of Tane Nikolov