The spontaneous repatriation of the Crimean Tatars, which took place at the turn of the twenty first century was accompanied by demands for restoring historical justice and returning the land title to the Crimean Tatars (Uehling, G., Williams, B. G., Zaloznaya, M., & Gerber, T. P.).

Memory about native lands and father's houses was the main consolidating factor during the deportation. A demand to return to the Crimea became a central political slogan for the mobilization movement and the political struggle for the rights of the Crimean Tatars. The repatriation process itself was the implementation of the right of the Crimean Tatars to live on their own land.

Coming back to the Crimea was followed by trips to former houses, native villages and destroyed cemeteries. During those memorial trips to the previous places of residence the repatriates reproduced in their imagination the old Crimean landscape that was lost after the deportation. 

Instead land acquisition and building their own homes is perceived by the Crimean Tatars as the final stage of repatriation. Actually, the first decades of repatriation were marked by constant conflicts between the Crimean Tatars and the central authorities because of the land issue. Since the restitution of property was out of the question, the Crimean Tatars thought they had a moral right to engage in prolonged conflicts and to claim land title. At that time, such processes as "samozahvat", organized seizure of land plots for individual houses with their subsequent legalization in the courts, became massive in Crimea. The demand for property was based on a moral economy. The Crimean Tatars believed that a huge trauma associated with repression and forced eviction may be partially offset by acquisition of land by returnees.