ISTANBUL – A Turkish imam has been volunteering for a few days each week, to clean and preserve a neighboring church that is no longer attended by Christian congregation.

“This is a country of tolerance dating back to the Ottoman times for other faiths, for their places of worship,” imam Metin Halıcı told Anadolu Agency on Friday, October 14.

“We should keep their places clean too in their absence.”

Halıcı is usually seen for a few days every week with a broom and dust cloth going to a place of worship in the courtyard of his house.

With only a roughly drawn cross on the building’s door, the church is usually cleaned by Halıcı, a devout Muslim and imam of a neighboring mosque.

Hired as the imam of the mosque in central city of Yozgat’s Sarıkaya district 13 years ago, Halıcı says he has never neglected the up-keep of the church that has had zero congregations since.

Save for his efforts, the building would not have survived to receive some occasional Christian visitors who perform masses there.

It is a tradition passed upon Halıcı by his predecessor, and this is something he intends to continue doing until the end of his tenure in the district which was once home to an Armenian community, up until the 1960s.

Though no Armenian families live in Yozgat, members of the diaspora, living abroad and in other Turkish cities, visit the neighborhood where the church is located every year and attend masses in the small church that is believed to be built some 2,000 years ago.

Learning the Armenian history of the district, Halıcı decided to keep their legacy intact just as his predecessor did.