Eight-year-old Maya Merhi, who was born with no legs, had to shuffle around a camp in northern Syria on makeshift limbs fashioned from old tubing and tin cans.
Now she is taking her first tentative steps in Istanbul on prosthetic legs, after images of her struggling in the tent encampment in Idlib appeared on social media and she was brought to Turkey.
Her father Mohammed Merhi, who suffers from the same congenital disorder as his daughter, had fled fighting in the city of Aleppo with his wife and six children and took refuge in rebel-controlled Idlib.
"We faced many challenges, especially moving from the place we lived in tents... The situation in general was difficult," he said. "She was unable to walk so we had to create something for her to protect her from the ground," he said, referring to the improvised legs he designed from tubes and old tins of tuna.
Doctors hope Maya will be able to fully walk with her new prosthetic legs in three months, and they say that her father's determination made their work easier.
"He did everything to make this child walk and God helped them," Turkish prosthetic specialist Mehmet Zeki Culcu said. "Normally nobody would believe she could walk with these makeshift limbs."
The Syrian conflict has displaced more than 11 million people, around half within Syria and half as refugees abroad - including more than 3.5 million in neighbouring Turkey.
Turkey Arrests Masked Teenager For 5 Mosque Stabbings Turkish Woman Arrested For Criticising Instagram Ban, Insulting Tayyip Erdogan Turkey Restores Access to Instagram after Nine-Day Block Tear Gas Fired After Kolkata Protest Against Doctor's Rape-Murder Turns Violent 150 mg Semen In Kolkata Doctor's Body, Suspect Gang-Rape: Parents To Court 2 French Rafale Jets Collide Mid-Air, Instructor, Pilot Missing Pics: PM Modi's 98-Minute Address Becomes Longest-Ever I-Day Speech "Freedom Fighters Would Not Have Dreamt...": AAP's Atishi On Arvind Kejriwal 5 Big Highlights Of PM Modi's Independence Day Speech Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world.