  Diffusive Shock Acceleration (DSA) cannot efficiently accelerate particles
without the presence of self-consistently generated or pre-existing strong
turbulence ($ \delta B/B \sim 1 $) in the vicinity of the shock. The problem we
address in this article is: if large amplitude magnetic disturbances are
present upstream and downstream of a shock then Turbulent Reconnection (TR)
will set in and will participate not only in the elastic scattering of
particles but also in their heating and acceleration. We demonstrate that large
amplitude magnetic disturbances and Unstable Current Sheets (UCS),
spontaneously formed in the strong turbulence in the vicinity of a shock, can
accelerate particles as efficiently as DSA in {\bf large scale systems and on
long time scales}. We start our analysis with "elastic" scatterers upstream and
downstream and estimate the energy distribution of particles escaping from the
shock, recovering the well known results from the DSA theory. Next we analyze
the additional interaction of the particles with active scatterers (magnetic
disturbances and UCS) upstream and downstream of the shock. We show that the
asymptotic energy distribution of the particles accelerated by DSA/TR has very
similar characteristics with the one due to DSA alone, but the synergy of DSA
with TR is much more efficient: The acceleration time is an order of magnitude
shorter and the maximum energy reached two orders of magnitude higher. We claim
that DSA is the dominant acceleration mechanism in a short period before TR is
established, and then strong turbulence will dominate the heating and
acceleration of the particles. In other words, the shock serves as the
mechanism to set up a strongly turbulent environment, in which the acceleration
mechanism will ultimately be the synergy of DSA and TR.
