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Amid Escalating Syrian Carnage, Turkey Shoots Down Assads Planes

GAZIANTEP, TurkeyOver the last several days Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan has pulled out all the stops in his attempts to deal with the Syrian crisis, even shooting down fighter jets from the Assad regime air force. It's a very high-risk strategy in a complicated conflict that's less a chess match than a game of deadly tic-tac-toe, with every option blocked until nobody wins. Erdoan's campaign is an attempt to exert maximum pressure on his two purported allies, the adversaries Russia and the United States, using the Americans to influence…

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