ANKARA, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 295,000 Syrians returned home from Turkey in 2018, Turkish Interior Ministry said Saturday.

Meanwhile, nearly 270,000 irregular migrants were held during their attempts to illegally cross borders, and 55,894 of them were deported, the ministry said on its social media account.

Turkey's Deputy Interior Minister Ismail Catakli said on Monday that more Syrians are expected to return to their homeland following Turkey's military operations in Syria.

"We think the number will increase even more in the upcoming period in parallel with the development there (Syria)," Catakli was quoted by Anadolu Agency as saying.

Turkey has been hosting a large number of refugees since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011. The number of registered Syrian refugees in October 2018 stood at about 3.59 million, according to the UN Refugee Agency.