ANTAKYA, Turkey — A fisherman’s boat bobs on the sapphire blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. A stray puppy gambols on a deserted sand beach. In normal times, this small seaside Eden in Turkey’s southernmost province of Hatay would buzz with summer holidaymakers. But the coming season threatens to be different in Meydankoy. “We are on the frontline of the war,” says Ozgur Kaya, a fisherman, pointing toward the Syrian side of the coast. The thud of artillery fire drowns out his voice

In the nearby township of Yayladag, a group of students paces nervously, their faces etched with fear. A stray rocket launched during the ongoing battle between Syrian forces and assorted opposition fighters over the predominantly Armenian town of Kassab has just landed on the edge of town. “That rocket could have hit us. We could have been killed,” says a female student who declines to identify herself by name. The students have petitioned the government to provide a new campus so they can complete the semester out of harm’s way. “And if they don’t, we will just have to quit school,” says a male student, who also chooses to remain anonymous.

Fears that the country might be sucked into the Syrian conflict escalated after Turkey shot down a Syrian air force jet on March 23, not far from Meydankoy, on the grounds that it violated Turkish airspace.

The leader of Turkey’s main secular opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kilicdaroglu, told Al-Monitor in a recent interview that the downing of the Syrian jet was part of a government scheme to provoke war with Syria. “They want to deflect public attention away from their thievery,” he claimed. Kilicdaroglu was referring to the corruption probe launched on Dec. 17 linking the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his children and his cabinet ministers to massive graft charges