[caption id="attachment_2690" align="alignleft" width="1023"] Asylum seekers now try to jump on cargo trains to get from Turkey via the Balkans to Central Europe | Photo: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto[/caption] Turkey's Interior Minister said on Thursday that thanks to the unremitting efforts of the government, Turkey has significantly reduced the number of migrants entering the country without documents. At a meeting of media representatives in Istanbul on Thursday (October 12), Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said that since the beginning of his term, Turkish authorities have arrested more than 112,000 migrants. enter this country without permission. The arrests took place over the past three months and spanned nearly 3,000 separate operations, he explained, the English-language version of the government-backed Hurriyet Daily News reported. About 48,000 of those arrested were repatriated to their homeland, Yerlikaya continued. Additionally, Turkish authorities said they had arrested about 4,000 suspected migrant smugglers and detained more than 1,200 of them. "Migration is one of the global problems of our age," stated Yerlikaya. "Türkiye continues to struggle with this problem," he added, using the alternative name for the country. Meanwhile, more than 120,000 foreigners have left Turkey because their residence permits have expired or because they have violated the rules in other ways, the minister said. According to official statistics, Turkey currently hosts more than 4.7 million migrants legally registered as asylum seekers or refugees.