Turkish authorities have captured 257 migrant smugglers in countrywide operations, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced Friday.
Authorities arrested 59 smugglers and released 22 on probation, while the remaining 171 are still being processed after raids across 41 cities in the past two weeks, Yerlikaya said on X.
A total of 6,339 operations were conducted targeting migrant smuggling and a total of 3,924 smugglers were arrested while 1,693 were released on parole in 2024 so far, according to Yerlikaya.
Türkiye has been a migration destination, especially in the 1980s, and currently hosts more than 4.4 million residents of foreign origin. It hosts more than 3.1 million Syrians under temporary protection, while another 228,290 people stay in the country under the status of international protection. The latest figures show it hosts more than 1.1 million people with residence permits.
Irregular migration, however, escalated as undocumented migrants, those arriving under the condition of limited stays, illegally outstaying, are growing in numbers.
Though the number varies over the years, Afghans and Syrians make up the bulk of intercepted irregular migrants. Palestinian migrants and migrants from Turkmenistan, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Sudan usually follow them in statistics.
European countries have remained attractive to migrants from African and Asian countries in the past decade and Türkiye is a transit route for thousands of asylum-seekers looking to cross over to Greece from its western coasts.
The sea route is naturally the main choice of migrants, but it is also the most dangerous as the Mediterranean waters are not always safe for boats, let alone dinghies, a cheap way of transportation for most migrants.
Tricked by migrant smugglers to take the short route from Türkiye to Greece, migrants barely make it to the Greek waters before their boats are either caught or in danger of sinking amid bad weather.
The number of intercepted irregular migrants has been on the rise since 2020, in proportion to more efficient work by the Coast Guard.
In 2020, the Coast Guard intercepted 20,380 irregular migrants, while this number rose to 23,676 in 2021.
In 2022 and 2023, the number was 49,518 and 56,954, respectively. Along with migrants, smugglers organizing their crossing and profiting off the desperate batches of migrants increased.
In 2023, 169 smugglers were captured, while this number was 293 in 2022, 113 in 2021 and 53 in 2020.
