TOPCU, Turkey — The dull thud of a mortar shell, the crackle of gunfire — these are the sounds of daily life in this remote village on the Turkish Syrian border. “Look,” said Abdulkadir Isikdogan, a local youth gesturing toward shattered window panes and pockmarked walls. “Sometimes, the bullets hit us as well; we are lucky to have escaped unscathed.”

Topcu, on the Turkish side of the border, is on the front line of a vicious turf war between the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Salafist groups led by Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and Ahrar al-Sham. The battle, which has Topcu caught in its crosshairs, is over a village called Susik that keeps switching hands.

Over the past weeks, the YPG has been making big gains, capturing more than a dozen villages and the much-coveted Til Kocher (Yaroubiya) border crossing to Iraq. On Nov. 11, the Salafists retaliated with a remotely controlled bomb that was detonated in front of the Kurdish Red Crescent headquarters in Kobani. At least 14 civilians, including several children, were killed.

But the YPG appears to be retaining the upper hand and is said to be eyeing Tal Abyad, which lies east of Susik and Kobani.