ISTANBUL, Turkey--Istanbul University is more than 700 miles away from the Syrian front lines.
But these days tensions from the bloody civil war can be felt on the leafy campus.
There, Islamists and leftwing students have battled across well-manicured gardens and commons, indicating how the war in Syria has reawakened deep grudges in Turkey.
After at least four clashes in as many weeks, riot police now stand guard outside the university gates and students travel in groups for safety.
"If they come again, we’ll be ready," says Sena Ozcanli, a 22-year-old economics major who found herself on campus earlier this month when a group of baton-wielding Islamists stormed past security to attack a group of leftwing students.
International attention has lately focused on Kobane, the Kurdish town in Syria at risk of being overrun by extremist militants, and Turkey’s reluctance to wade deeper into the war by deploying nearby troops.
But many Turks worry that the war has reached them already, by deepening historic fractures between the country’s Islamists, nationalists, Kurds and liberals. Clashes linked to Kobane have already left more than 34 dead this month.
In the country’s Kurdish-dominated southeast, where most of the deadly protests took place, devout Muslims were on the receiving end of many attacks. In one case, a group of men distributing food were falsely accused of being ISIS supporters and beaten to death by hardline supporters of the PKK, an outlawed Kurdish militia linked to fighters defending Kobane.
At Istanbul University, the violence started inside the picturesque department of literature. Students, who witnessed and retaliated against one attack, recalled how a dozen men or so had stormed in, launched glass bottles in all directions and shouted "Allahu Akbar," or "God is Great" before tearing a poster from the wall and brawling with more liberal students until squads of riot police intervened.
What had set the assailants off, apparently, was a poster denouncing the brutality of ISIS, the extremist group which has laid siege to Kobane.
Witnesses and media reports identified the assailants as members of a fundamentalist group called the "Young Muslims," composed of both university students and outside supporters.
The students, who had hung the poster, were self-identified socialists, disturbed by the growing threat of ISIS in the region. After the brawl, they charged on the dean's office to demand answers.
"We wanted to know why they let the ISIS-lovers in," said 21-year-old Murat Cagri Alis, who never reached the dean, thanks to a wall of riot police, who detained him and others.
While Istanbul University, known for its politically charged student body, has seen its fair share of violence in the past, the war in Syria appears to have ignited a particularly vigorous fire. Since late September, dozens of students have been detained and extra police have been dispatched to guard the campus near the city’s historical center.
Among the students, the sense of distrust of the school administration runs deep. Many believe the authorities allowed the "Young Muslims" to enter the university gates to deliver a beating to the school’s troublesome leftists.
As Alis was detained, he recalled police using the opportunity to remind him who was in charge: "We will do our will -- not yours," an officer told him. "The government runs this school, not you.”
Yet neither the conflict on Turkey’s border with Kobane or at the gates of Istanbul University is quite so black-and-white.
Turkey’s reluctance to drive tanks into Kobane has much to do with the real risks of engaging in war with ISIS — risks serious enough to deter the United States from sending its own group troops to Syria or Iraq.
And before Istanbul University beefed up its security, there was little to stop a band of attackers from pushing themselves through its gates. According to media reports, several members of the "Young Muslims" were detained by police as well.