Türkiye President Tayyip Erdogan has declared a three-month state of emergency covering the 10 southern provinces hit by devastating earthquakes on Monday as winter weather hampers rescue efforts.

Erdogan has called the areas a disaster zone and says the move is designed to bolster rescue efforts by allowing him to "ensure that operations are carried out rapidly."

Declaring a state of emergency permits the president and cabinet to bypass parliament in enacting new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms as they deem necessary.

The decision came as the death toll from Monday's two major earthquakes, which hit a wide area of Türkiye and Syria, exceeded 5,000 – including 4,544 in Türkiye alone – and as rescuers raced against time to dig people out of the rubble of collapsed buildings.

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As the recovery effort continues, with rescue teams arriving from all over the globe – including one from China, with CGTN's reporter on board – the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that rescuers have only a small window of time to find survivors.

"It's now a race against time," WHO General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva. "Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminishes."

Authorities in Türkiye say more than 12,000 search and rescue personnel are working in the affected areas, along with 9,000 troops. Some 70 countries and sending personnel, equipment and aid.

But winter weather has hampered rescue and relief efforts and made the plight of the homeless even more miserable. Some areas are still without fuel and electricity.

And residents in several damaged Turkish cities have voiced their anger and despair at what they said was a slow and inadequate response from the authorities to the deadliest earthquake to hit Turkey since 1999.

"There is not even a single person here. We are under the snow, without a home, without anything," Murat Alinak, whose home in Malatya had collapsed and whose relatives are missing, told Reuters. "What shall I do, where can I go?"

But international aid teams have said the sheer scale of devastation has slowed down the response.

"The area is enormous. I haven't seen anything like this before," said Johannes Gust, from Germany's fire and rescue service, as he loaded equipment onto a truck at Türkiye's Adana airport.

At Türkiye's Iskenderun port, hundreds of shipping containers are ablaze, shutting down operations and forcing freight liners to divert vessels to other ports. The maritime authority said the fire was a result of earthquake damage.

In Malatya, where snow is thick on the ground, people have expressed their frustration at what they said was the lack of help as they searched for the missing.

With no specialist equipment or even gloves, they've tried to pick through the wreckage of homes crumpled by the force of the earthquake.

"My in-laws' grandchildren are there. We have been here for two days. We are devastated," said Sabiha Alinak.

"Where is the state? We are begging them. Let us do it, we can rescue them. We can do it with our means.

Erdogan has revealed that 70 countries have offered help in search and rescue operations and that Türkiye planned to open up hotels in the tourism hub of Antalya, to the west, to temporarily house people impacted by the quakes.