Türkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has admitted there were problems with his government's initial response to the earthquakes that devastated his nation's south.
The combined reported death toll from the disaster in Türkiye and neighbouring Syria — the world's deadliest earthquake in more than a decade — has risen past 15,000.
Officials and medics said 12,391 people had died in Türkiye and 2,992 in Syria from Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 15,383.
Mr Erdoğan, who will contest an election in May, said during a visit to the disaster zone that response operations were now working normally and he promised no-one would be left homeless.
Across a swathe of southern Türkiye, people are seeking temporary shelter and food amid freezing winter weather, and waiting in anguish by piles of rubble where family and friends may still lie buried.
Footage posted on social media shows rescuers forming human chains as they try to dig through collapsed buildings, periodically falling silent in the hope of hearing stifled pleas for help.
And experts say the window for survival is quickly closing.
Many Turks have complained about a lack of equipment, expertise and support to rescue those trapped — sometimes even as they could hear cries for help.
"Where is the state? Where have they been for two days? We are begging them. Let us do it, we can get them out," Sabiha Alinak said near a snow-covered collapsed building where her young relatives were trapped in the city of Malatya.
The death toll from the disaster in Türkiye and Syria is expected to rise further. Hundreds of buildings in many cities collapsed and became tombs for people who had been asleep inside when the earthquakes hit in the early morning.
In the Turkish city of Antakya, dozens of bodies, some covered in blankets and sheets and others in body bags, were lined up on the ground outside a hospital.
Melek, 64, said she had seen no rescue teams.
"We survived the earthquake, but we will die here due to hunger or cold," she said.
Many in the disaster zone slept in their cars or in the streets under blankets, fearful of going back into buildings shaken by the magnitude-7.8 tremor —Türkiye's deadliest since 1999 — and by a second powerful quake hours later.
The confirmed death toll rose to 9,057 in Türkiye on Wednesday. In Syria, the death toll climbed to at least 2,950 by late Wednesday, according to the government and a rescue service operating in the rebel-held north-west.
Turkish authorities released video of rescued survivors, including a young girl in pyjamas, and an older man covered in dust, an unlit cigarette clamped between his fingers as he was pulled from the debris.
Turkish officials say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450 kilometres from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east.
Aid not reaching parts of Syria
In Syria, the earthquakes claimed lives as far south as Hama, 250 kilometres from their epicentre.
Some of those who died in Türkiye were refugees from Syria's war. Their body bags arrived at the border in taxis, vans and in piles atop flatbed trucks to be taken to final resting places in their homeland.
The disaster has left more than 298,000 people homeless in Syria, and 180 shelters for the displaced have been opened, Syrian state media has reported, apparently referring to areas under government control, rather than those held by opposition factions.
In Syria, the relief effort has been complicated by a conflict that has partitioned the nation.
Syria's ambassador to the United Nations said the government had a "lack of capabilities and lack of equipment" but blamed this on more than a decade of civil war in his country and Western sanctions.
International aid shipments began arriving in Damascus on Wednesday.
But opposition-held areas near Türkiye's border cannot receive aid from government-held parts of Syria without Damascus's authorisation.
Much of the affected area in Syria is controlled by different — and sometimes conflicting — groups.
The north-west is divided between land de facto controlled by Turkey and by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a rebel group with ties to al-Qaida. Syria's north-east is mostly held by US-backed Kurdish-led groups.
Foreign aid has for years been brought into the north-western Idlib province by way of Turkey, because of the difficulty of going by way of Damascus.
But the area of southern Turkey traditionally used as a staging area has itself been heavily damaged by the earthquake.
In particular, damage to the Hatay airport and the road to the border crossing used for aid, Bab al-Hawa, was delaying shipments, said Emma Beals, a non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.
"There is also the fact that there are enormous needs in Türkiye itself," she said.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Türkiye was working on opening two more border gates with Syria to enable the flow of humanitarian aid.
Earthquake relief will impact election results
Mr Erdoğan, who has declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces and sent in troops to help, arrived in Kahramanmaras to view the damage and see the rescue and relief effort.
Speaking to reporters, with the wail of ambulance sirens in the background, he said there had been problems with roads and airports but "we are better today".
"We will be better tomorrow and later. We still have some issues with fuel … but we will overcome those too," Mr Erdoğan said.
However, later, he condemned criticism of his government's response to the disaster.
"This is a time for unity, solidarity, he told reporters in the southern province of Hatay.
"In a period like this, I cannot stomach people conducting negative campaigns for political interest."
Nevertheless, the disaster will pose a challenge to Mr Erdoğan in the May election, which was already set to be the toughest fight of his two decades in power.
Any perception that the government is failing to address the disaster properly could hurt his prospects of holding power.
On the other hand, analysts say, he could rally national support around the crisis response and strengthen his position.
For his part, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appears to be seeking political advantage from the earthquake, pressing for foreign aid to be delivered through his territory as he aims to chip away at international isolation, have analysts have said.
ABC/wires
