Via Truthdig

Martin Kaloshi

Co-Managing Editor

Take a stroll down Tirana, Albania’s main boulevard after 6 pm, and you’ll find yourself caught in a sea of flamingos. For the 100th consecutive day, tens of thousands of young Albanians have ditched the afternoon cafe culture and instead procured themselves cardboard flamingo cutouts and signs, taking to the streets with a clear message: Albania is not for sale.

The turmoil started on May 23rd, when residents of Zvernec – a village in the country’s south home to flamingos and Europe’s last wild river delta – arrived at their local beach only to find it fenced off with barbed wire. “There was no sign whatsoever, neither by the lagoon where they were cutting the road, nor on the beach where the machinery was working … of any kind of license or permits or even just declaration of who they were,” tells Ariel Brunner, Europe Director for the environmental charity BirdLife International, in an interview with CNN. 

It was only from media reports that locals became aware of the development barring their access to the sea: a luxury resort dreamed up by American billionaire couple Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, backed by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

4 years ago, Trump and Kushner made their first visit to Albania. Aboard their friend Nathaniel Rothschild’s yacht, the couple traced the country’s entire southern coastline, stopping to swim and window shop by places like Sazan: a lush, uninhabited ex-military base and Albania’s largest island. “We swam to the island, we went on a hike barefoot to the top and we were just captivated,” Ivanka Trump remembers. The next step, she added, was to “help realize its potential,” a pledge that PM Edi Rama, who met them on the yacht, was keen to ratify. 

Rama granted the Sazan Island project “strategic investment” status in December 2025, which would give Kushner and Trump fast-track access to land and building permits. Albanians remained unaware. 

“We can’t afford to not exploit a gift like Sazan,” Rama told the Guardian, “We need luxury tourism like a desert needs water.” 

In Zvernec, the plans included another mega-resort. There, it would occupy parts of the Vjosa-Narta Protected Landscape, home to more than 2,300 total species of flora and fauna, including the endangered Mediterranean monk seal, Egyptian vulture, and over 200 bird species such as the flamingo and Dalmatian pelican, according to BirdLife International. 

In order to carry on with the resort, Rama swiftly amended Albania’s Protected Areas Law, which previously prohibited development in vulnerable natural zones like Vjosa-Narta. Now, it exempts “structures of excellence, 5 stars or more.” 

Environmental biologist Melitjan Nezaj tells CNN that construction has already “blocked one of the two openings connecting the Narta Lagoon to the sea, cutting off tidal exchange with immediate, cascading consequences for fish, birds, and the entire food chain.” 

The resort and the opaque planning behind it quickly sparked outrage in Zvernec, which, after a private security personnel’s assault on a protester, turned nationwide. For most, however, the outrage went beyond environmental destruction. The flamingos they began to hold up stood for not only the natural habitat at stake, but a broader need – “like a desert needs water”– for state transparency and accountability.

Protesters are students and workers, overwhelmingly Gen-Z, fighting for completely fresh political air. They demand the reinstatement of the Protected Areas Law, as well as Rama’s immediate resignation after 13 years in office. They point to larger issues, too, like the country’s crumbling education and healthcare systems and unrestrained corruption: issues that for decades have pushed their relatives out. In the capital of Tirana, crowds reached 250,000 at their height.

“It was the largest protest in the country since the fall of communism.”

Solidarity demonstrations quickly ensued across the world. In cities like New York, Toronto, Milan, Montreal, and 80 others, the Albanian diaspora joined in on the newly named “Flamingo Revolution.” 

Beyond its scale, the Flamingo Revolution also got acclaim for its propriety. Parents regularly brought their young children. Artists performed. Everyone cleaned up the streets afterwards. Protesting quickly became the new 6 pm go-to for Tirana residents, as they shunned their prior ways with signs reading “Get up from the cafe!” Some more creative signs read, “Stop it, Ivanka! Girlie pop, this isn’t you!”

The Flamingo Revolution has already caught the European Union’s attention, which Albania has been trying to join for decades now. The European Parliament backed protesters, urging Rama to repeal his Law on Strategic Investments as well as his amendments to the Law on Protected Areas. 

Rama, yet to resign, insists both projects must go on.