Albania Is Not For Sale
Albanians are mobilizing for a better future. What began as a protest against a Trump-linked resort project on protected land has grown into a referendum on the nation's political class.
Se mileti po gatitet, se tirani lebetitet!/As the people stir, the tyrant trembles
Fan Noli, “Anës lumenjve/By the rivers” (1928)
It’s hard enough to start a revolution, even harder to continue it, and hardest of all to win it. But it’s only afterwards, when we have won, that the true difficulties begin.
Larbi Ben M’hidi, The Battle of Algiers (1966)
A generation raised on the promise of the West is no longer waiting to be saved by it. Young Albanians have decided to fight for their own country. A plan backed by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to build a €1.4 billion ($1.6 USD) luxury resort on Sazan Island in the Adriatic Sea and a nearby nature reserve has sparked widespread protests in Albania. What began as a protest against the sale of protected land to foreign oligarchs has become a referendum on the nation’s political class.
In January 2025, just two months after Donald Trump’s re-election, the Albanian government granted preliminary approval for Kushner’s project, even though it infringes upon the designated Vjosa-Narta Protected Landscape. The Vjosa-Narta area is a critical corridor for millions of migratory birds. The landscape and its surrounding waters shelter over 70 endangered species including the Mediterranean monk seal, Dalmatian pelicans, and pink flamingos.
The main Albanian environmental NGO, PPNEA, described the harm already done to the ecosystem as “unprecedented.” In May, construction crews dumped gravel on ancient sand dunes, and construction blocked one of the two openings connecting Narta Lagoon to the sea. Scientists say the damage could take hundreds of years to repair.
In May, local residents and environmental groups began pushing back against the project, and developers erected a fence at the site to cut off locals’ access to the area. However, the Vjosa-Narta issue did not receive widespread public attention until May 30th, when private security forces on Zvërnec violently dragged a protester through the sand. The national police stood idly by. The event, captured on video, went viral on social media.
After weeks of government disregard for the local population, this scandal proved to be the tipping point. On the following day, May 31st, thousands of protestors gathered in Albania’s capital Tirana. Demonstrations have continued across the country every day since, not only to oppose construction on ecologically sensitive land, but also to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama.
The ecological cause is, of course, front and center: protestors brandish flamingos on cardboard signs and inflatable floaties. Fittingly, the movement has been dubbed the “Flamingo Revolution.” Protestors have unified under the slogan “Albania is not for sale.” Signs read “Albanian waters don’t go well with pedophiles and their associates,” referencing the Trump family’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. They poke fun at Ivanka Trump’s now viral interview, where she describes “finding” Sazan island, oblivious to its history as a former Communist-era military base: “Ivanka, girl, we found Albania first.” Protesters call her “Christina Columbus,” depicting her on placards alongside the infamous colonialist.
Kushner’s project in Zvërnec and Sazan is merely the latest insult from the Rama government. A series of legal changes have opened all of Albania’s protected land to private development: Law 21/2024 amended the Protected Areas law to permit 5-star resorts and large-scale infrastructure inside even the most strictly protected ecosystems. In the village of Rrjoll, a protected stretch near Velipojë Beach, it cleared the way for a €280 million resort. In the swiftly emptying alpine regions of the North, the 2025 “Mountain Package” (Law 20/2025) let the state reclassify land as “development zones” and gift it to private investors for the symbolic pricetag of one euro — even as demolition crews tore down the family-built guesthouses in the village of Theth.
On the central coast, Albania’s main port of Durrës has been handed to Dubai’s Eagle Hills for a superyacht port. The investors are exempt from infrastructure and social-housing taxes, while the Albanian public is footing a €399 million bill just to relocate the existing port. Further south in Dhërmi, BALFIN Group, a conglomerate owned by Albania’s only billionaire, Samir Mane, built the Green Coast megaresort, a private town for 10,000, reportedly by strong-arming locals and drying up their water supply.
Again and again, public land has passed to a handful of oligarchs, foreign and domestic. Albanians have realized the enemy is not one illegitimate project or one corrupt minister, but a system built to benefit a well-connected few.
Given this context, the Kushner acquisition has become a lightning rod for mounting grievances. Prime Minister Rama’s neoliberal Socialist Party (PS) has been in power since 2013. Under his leadership, public infrastructure has been systematically whittled away: hospitals, schools and universities are cripplingly under-resourced.
Simultaneously, the government suffers from historic administrative bloat, reminiscent of old Soviet jokes about bureaucracy (“we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us”). Albania’s industrial capacities have diminished, and its agriculture is the least developed in the region – but, as our Prime Minister would remind us, tourism has experienced a historic boom! Yet service industry work is poorly paid and highly seasonal.
As Rama courts elite tourists, over half of Albanians cannot afford a week-long vacation. One cannot build a nation on luxury resorts.
On the seventh continuous day of protests, demonstrators in Tirana assembled a boulevard-length “blanket of injustices.” On social media and at rallies, protesters have decried dilapidated hospitals, high emigration rates, low wages, and inadequate pensions. They fault the government’s handling of national emergencies, such as the 2021 earthquake. They criticize Rama’s coziness with Israel.
They also reference the slew of corruption scandals within Rama’s party, from the February 2025 arrest of Tirana’s mayor Erion Veliaj on money-laundering charges, to the indictment of Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku over rigged tenders. Whereas Veliaj, who had lost favor with Rama, has spent more than a year in pre-trial detention, Balluku was shielded from arrest by the Socialist-controlled parliament.
Meanwhile, the main opposition force, the Democratic Party (PD), does not offer a meaningful alternative. Notably, under Sali Berisha’s tenure in 1997, Albania descended into near-civil war when pyramid schemes — endorsed by government officials and allowed to proliferate despite IMF warnings — wiped out the savings of two-thirds of the population. Berisha was even barred from the United States under the Biden administration for “significant corruption.”
Every four years, both major parties run on an agenda of “anti-corruption,” pledging to bring Albania into the EU. In the 35 years since the collapse of the communist government, neither have succeeded.
The democratic process has thus been reduced to a power struggle between equally corrupt and ideologically indistinguishable factions. In the absence of policy differences, the promise of change rings hollow. Furthermore, constitutional changes over the last two decades have made it almost impossible for new parties to enter the political fray.
After two days of protests, Sali Berisha, (still!) the leader of the PD, expressed his support for the Kushner project. This was widely viewed as proof of collaboration between the two major parties. Protest signs depict edited images of Berisha and Rama kissing. The dominant rally cry “Rama në burg, Berisha në burg” (Rama in jail, Berisha in jail) condemns the leaders of both major parties.
Berisha has called these chants “tools of the government.” Rama, meanwhile, has attributed them to everyone from Greeks hampering Albania’s development, to nefarious forces looking to prevent our EU accession, to the Iranian government. With the arrogance of a king, he blames everyone but his own corrupt and scandal-ridden leadership that has made Albania a playground for wealthy foreigners and untenable for its locals.
Rama has discounted the protests as inconsequential: “Not even 5,000, nor 500,000 people in the square would be enough.” He argues that over 800,000 citizens had “made an agreement” with him through their votes for the Socialist Party in the 2025 elections. Yet such an agreement was made under duress: 185,000 public sector employees are expected to back the party or lose their livelihood.
The protests have also laid bare the extent of Albania’s media capture. We rank 83rd out of 180 countries in the 2026 Press Freedom Index; most influential private broadcasters are owned by a handful of government-aligned business interests. As demonstrators filled the streets, mainstream outlets such as Top Channel and ABC News amplified AI-generated disinformation about the protests.
The movement’s first few days were otherwise met with radio-silence from the media. The blackout became impossible to ignore as the protests were picked up by the international press, leading some demonstrators to call for a boycott of Albanian media.
The servility of the Albanian press was thrown into even sharper relief when Prime Minister Rama was interviewed on CNN. Unaccustomed to serious journalism, he grew flustered and resorted to a very Trumpian line: “Fake news!”
It doesn’t come as a shock that the flamingo revolution is driven by Gen Z. News of the protests first spread through Instagram and TikTok, not traditional broadcast media, and the crowds skew remarkably young. Signs feature memes, anime references, and Bad Bunny lyrics (“Thеy want to take my river and my beach too/ They want my neighborhood and grandma to leave”). They sing patriotic hymns and recite poems (my favorite among them, “By the rivers” by Fan Noli).
Gen Z is the first generation of Albanians that was born and raised entirely after the collapse of the communist regime. We were brought up on the promise of Western democratic values and neoliberal capitalism; yet we’ve seen very little ROI.
We can’t reasonably expect to purchase a home: in 2024, the price of an apartment in Tirana jumped from roughly €1,290 to €2,125 per square metre, even as the median monthly wage sits near €630.
Nor can we expect quality education. Public higher education receives just 0.5% of GDP, the lowest share among EU and OECD countries. The basic sciences are hollowing out: in 2023 the University of Tirana’s mathematics, physics and chemistry programs enrolled just 18, 8, and 6 students respectively, leaving all three at risk of closure.
For Gen Z, opportunities for specialized careers have dwindled. So we leave.
More than 1.2 million Albanians have fled the country since 1991, including at least 500,000 under Edi Rama’s tenure as Prime Minister. Just last year, 18,300 young people left Albania, the highest decline in all of Europe. Per the 2025 census, only 2.3 million people remain.
My parents’ generation had an unshaken belief in the West. Their rallies in the ’90s demanded, “We want Albania to be like the rest of Europe.” But Gen Z has come to realize that our love for Europe is unrequited. Sure, Western tourists enjoy our beaches and mountains; yet Albanians in the EU are subject to xenophobia and discrimination. The promise of EU accession has been dangled like a carrot, but decades later, Albanians are still waiting.
EU leaders have been all too willing to ignore Rama’s strongman tendencies and domestic corruption, just as he has been willing to play ball boy for their aims – kneeling before Giorgia Meloni and agreeing to host Italy’s migrant detention centers; and acceding to the EU’s appeasement of Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić, to the detriment of Albanians in Kosovo and the Presheva Valley.
Autocrats are not toppled easily. Rama’s patronage network is well-developed. New, smaller parties are hampered by a lopsided electoral system and a hostile media landscape. And Rama has driven much of his would-be opposition to flee the country.
Albanians who have taken to the streets have done so for a variety of reasons. They are united only by a commitment to national sovereignty and hostility towards the reigning political class. This is a potential vulnerability for the movement, since Rama cannot be toppled by a fragmented opposition. But for a people who had seemingly forgotten that a better world is possible, such a large and sustained wave of protests serves as a beacon of hope.
As Lea Ypi writes, Gen Z’s willingness to fight for Albania is a demonstration of self-respect. We don’t want our country sold to the highest bidder. We want to live there.
Across the diaspora, Albanians have started to mobilize. Protests have sprung up in Berlin, Milan, Florence, Bologna, Vienna, Paris, London, Toronto, Washington DC, New York — every major hub for Albanian migration. “We don’t want to be immigrants around the world and tourists in our own country,” reads a widely circulated sign.
Friends I hadn’t spoken to since high school message me excitedly. Many who had sworn to leave home without looking back now find themselves booking flights to Tirana. As I go through the motions of graduating college in California, I know my place is in Skanderbeg square.
In this “Flamingo Revolution,” young people dare ask: why should the flamingos leave, when Rama and Berisha can go instead? And more importantly, why should we have to leave? We are fighting for Vjosa-Narta, but also for a country with working hospitals, fair wages, and quality public education — where salvation needn’t come from a US green card or an EU stay permit.
I have always believed that a better world is possible. That for my beautiful home, my small and proud nation, the best days lie ahead. I am beyond grateful that the rest of my generation has started, with cautious optimism, to believe the same. Each day, the demonstrations end with a cry of “Neser më shumë” (“We’ll be more tomorrow”). They have grown steadily in size and show no sign of stopping.
