The Turkish coast guard has nabbed 41 irregular migrants off the coast of western Muğla province, the agency said Sunday.
The coast guard found 16 irregular migrants, including a child, on land on the coast of Marmaris district.
Another group of 25 migrants, along with two suspected smugglers, were caught on a rubber boat near the coast of Fethiye district.
The two suspect smugglers were detained, while the migrants were transferred to the Provincial Directorate of Migration Management for further processing.
According to the latest statistics from the agency, coast guard teams caught a total of 55,467 irregular migrants in Turkish territorial waters in 2024.
The coast guard recorded 2,005 irregular migration cases throughout 2024, which spiked in August at 245, followed by September and November.
Some 45 migrants drowned to death while the authorities detained 484 migrant smugglers in total.
Türkiye has been a migration destination, especially in the past decade, 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.
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.
Some migrants make dangerous journeys over land or sea with the assistance of smugglers, who often abandon them, especially during sea journeys, after receiving thousands of dollars from each migrant.
Others are stopped by Turkish security forces before crossing the border into Europe.
While the number of migrants arriving in other countries fell in 2024, the EU border protection agency Frontex reports that Greece saw an increase of almost 40% compared to 2023. It says around 37,000 people have arrived in Greece since the beginning of 2024.
However, around 30,000 of those irregular arrivals traveled by boat from the west coast of Türkiye to the Greek islands in the eastern Aegean rather than crossing the land border between the two countries.