For the past few days, Turkish media coverage of the conflict in Syria has been eclipsed by the departure of Brazilian soccer star Alex de Souza from Turkey’s Fenerbahçe football club.

After yesterday’s incoming fire from Syria killed five members of the same family in the border town of Akçakale, however — prompting continuing rounds of shelling in the opposite direction from the Turkish armed forces — de Souza has been relegated to secondary importance alongside news of the rescue of an inflatable sex doll in the Black Sea.

The Obama government wasted little time weighing in on the situation, declaring itself “outraged” by the “depraved” Syrian strike. A more subdued emotional reaction had, of course, accompanied the 2010 Israeli slaying of eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American in international waters, an event that simply caused the US to feel “regret.”