Like many residents of Zvernec, a community on Albania’s coast, Brunela Mertiri swam and sunbathed at the Pishe Poro beach all her life—at least until the razor-wire fences went up this spring.
Those fences mark the proposed site of a luxury tourist resort that would stretch over 13 million square feet of coastal Albania, including protected lands around the Narta Lagoon and Sazan Island. The highly controversial Sazan resort project is backed by several companies affiliated with Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and has won the support of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. The development broke ground in April, but it has since stalled, following calls for an environmental review and investigations by Albania’s independent corruption watchdog, the Special Structure Against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK).
“This is my land. They do not deserve to come and take our land, our sea, our forest. It is ours; it is not theirs. It is not Kastrati’s nor Kushner’s nor Trump’s nor anyone else’s,” Mertiri said in a recent viral video clip, referring to Shefqet Kastrati, one of Albania’s most powerful businessmen, who is also linked to the project.
The video of Mertiri, as well as a clip of a young man being dragged by two private security personnel during a protest, conveys how enraged Albanians have become over the project. For more than a month, tens of thousands of protesters in Tirana, Albania’s capital, have marched to Rama’s office, demanding the cancellation of the project, his resignation, and more generally, the end of corruption in a country eager to join the European Union.
Dubbed the “Flamingo Revolution,” in honor of the migratory bird that shelters in the Narta Lagoon, this is the most significant social movement in Albania since the fall of the communist regime in 1991. It is without a doubt a Gen Z movement, echoing other youth-led anti-corruption and anti-authoritarian movements in the region, including in Hungary, Serbia, and beyond. Though nominally about the resort, the movement has grown to project a vision of a new Albania committed to the values of democracy, transparency, and accountability. It’s mobilizing multiple generations across the political spectrum, energizing the vast diaspora, and drawing European sympathizers. But they are up against entrenched corruption, clientelism, organized crime, and a long-standing neglect of the public interest and public good.
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An airport terminal with a modern red-and-grey building and a white control tower, viewed from a distance behind a tall chain-link fence topped with coiled barbed wire. The foreground is dry, yellow-brown grass under a bright blue sky with wispy clouds. - A recently constructed airport close to Narta Lagoon near Vlore, Albania, on June 13. Adnan Beci/AFP via Getty Images
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A flock of pink flamingos running and taking flight across a wide, calm body of water. A thin strip of land with low green trees is visible on the horizon under a pale blue sky. - Flamingos fly in Narta Lagoon near Vlore on June 6. Adnan Beci/AFP via Getty Images
First proposed in 2024, the resort would include multibillion-dollar investments at two sites: around $1.4 billion to develop the island of Sazan and a $4.7 billion to develop a vast plot of land around Zvernec. One leaked plan shows the construction of 600 townhouses, 520 villas, 1,400 apartments, a marina fit for 350 superyachts, a golf course, shops, restaurants, and much more. Rama insists that such a project will bring much needed development in the area. “They are big investors. It’s a historical chance for Albania,” he told the Financial Times in June. “If it were not Jared Kushner … nobody would give a shit about flamingos, about Albania, about nothing.”
But many locals see it as a corrupt deal that will enrich only a few wealthy investors and luxury tourists at the expense of their community, the environment, and Albania’s odds of joining the EU.
In a podcast interview in May, Ivanka Trump described how she and Kushner found Sazan Island, which she described as a “private island in the middle of the Mediterranean”: “We swam to the island, we went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated, and it stayed with us ever since.”
Her tale of discovery, which earned sarcastic comparisons to Robinson Crusoe in Albanian media, has enraged locals. Sazan is indeed a beautiful, uninhabited island crowning the Bay of Vlore, at the meeting point of the Adriatic and the Ionian seas. But it is by no means undiscovered, let alone pristine. The island has been a military outpost since antiquity. During the Cold War, it hosted Soviet submarines and was filled with bunkers and secret tunnels. After the military base was shuttered, the island was made into Karaburun-Sazan National Marine Park in 2010.
Until 2024, the sale or lease of protected national park lands for private development was illegal. Then, the Albanian Parliament passed Law 21/2024, an amendment to a 2017 law on protected areas that introduces exceptions for high-end, five-star tourism developments.
A large crowd of demonstrators gather in central Tirana on June 19 during protests against a proposed luxury tourism development project linked to Jared Kushner.Vlasov Sulaj /Jna Press (Photo by Vlasov Sulaj/JNA Press via Nexpher Images/Sipa USA
Protesters’ demands for the amendment’s repeal have been backed by members of the European Parliament, who issued a resolution demanding the cessation of the resort project and adherence to EU environmental protection laws. “If they go ahead, they’ll have a big problem with the EU during the negotiations,” said Tineke Strik, a Dutch MEP.
Beyond the environmental repercussions, protesters express concern about what they see as corruption in granting strategic investment status to the resort project. Albania’s Law on Strategic Investments, passed in 2015, puts the onus on the state to help accelerate administrative procedures for construction as well as help cover the costs of supporting infrastructure development. The decision to grant strategic investor status to Atlantic Incubation Partners, a Kushner-linked company in charge of planning the resort, stated that the defense ministry—in other words, taxpayers—would assume the costs of cleaning up the military waste on Sazan. The island is not an easy place to develop into a luxury resort. It lacks running water and a sewage system. It is littered by Soviet-era ammunition and unexploded mines. Protesters are concerned that local taxpayer money could be used so global billionaires can run a business that will not benefit the local area and its residents. Some 2,000 tourists visit the island every day, but very few Albanians would be able to afford a luxury hotel room at the resort, which could cost as much as a month’s wages. The result is a practice of development as dispossession, in which officials sell off public—or not actually public—property for their own benefit.
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Another potential hurdle for the luxury tourism resort is SPAK’s investigation into claims of falsified deeds for some land sold to Sazan Real Estate Development, the project’s developer. A dozen residents of Zvernec say they are the rightful owners of the land sold to the company by Artur Shehu, a Miami-based businessman from Albania. A court case about the dispute remains unresolved. Courts are notoriously corrupt in Albania, and unresolved property disputes are rampant, resulting from contradictory property restitution laws since the collapse of the communist regime.
So far, Kushner and his affiliated companies have not been implicated in these investigations. However, if SPAK confirms the claims of falsification of the deeds, it will hamper the further development of the Sazan resort project in the Zvernec area, where the bulk of the construction is planned.
A man holds an Albanian flag while a woman standing beside him carries a flamingo figure during a protest at Syntagma Square in Athens, Greece, on June 6. The demonstration was organized by Albanian migrants and solidarity activists.Daniel Yovkov / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images
Repealing Law 21/2024 and revamping the strategic investment status laws are the most actionable demands of the Flamingo Revolution. These actions would ensure that environmental protections and state-led investment strategies would align with EU frameworks. EU pressure already forced the Albanian government to suspend construction to conduct an environmental impact report.
Protesters are also increasingly demanding Rama’s resignation, although the prime minister has doubled down on the mandate of his fourth consecutive election victory, in which he won more than 53 percent of votes in 2025. (Election observers deemed the election largely competitive but noted “serious irregularities” including intimidation and allegations of vote buying.) In the absence of a robust opposition party, the potential resignation of the current government seems unlikely.
Nevertheless, the movement has triggered a noticeable shift in the political landscape in Albania. Protesters now chant for both Rama and Sali Berisha—the former president, prime minister, and current leader of the opposition—to go to jail. They denounce both major political parties for developing a political system dominated by authoritarianism and clientelism. Despite their acrimonious rivalry, both Rama and Berisha have deployed similar patron-client mechanisms to win elections, and both have followed similar strategies to attract foreign investors. Rama’s strategic investment law is effectively a continuation of Berisha’s “Albania, 1 Euro” scheme: boosting foreign investment by selling public assets at very low cost.
Evidently, the Flamingo Revolution is quickly expanding its scope beyond the resort project. In doing so, it is bringing about catharsis. The nightly marches along Tirana’s main boulevard are turning into a celebration, building community across political lines and generations. Gen Z environmentalists, feminists, and progressives are joined by middle-aged landowners and grandparents, lamenting in unison the shared challenges that have made everyday life unbearable. They’re joined by members of the diaspora—an estimated 1.2 million Albanians, or 44 percent of the current population, have migrated since 1990—who were pushed abroad by a lack opportunities and a safety net. In their signs and their statements, protesters draw connections between endemic corruption and the deep socio-economic scars the state has left on its people.
Protesters hold inflatable flamingos as they gather in front of the Albanian prime minister’s office in Tirana on June 10.Adnan Beci/AFP via Getty Images
“The reason I started protesting was the fact that my property is being seized from me,” said Luciana Kokaj, one of the most outspoken protesters. “But today I am in the square for a cause far greater than my own property … to raise my son with dignity in Albania. My son was born in the Netherlands, and I chose to bring him back to raise him here, but I want to raise him according to European Union standards.”
It is not yet clear what effect a big-tent protest will have on the resort project itself. The high-profile protests have already gotten the EU’s attention, and given the importance of EU accession in Albania, Rama might continue responding to its pressure. The global visibility of the Flamingo Revolution might also cause Kushner to withdraw from the deal, as he did with a similar development deal in Serbia following protests and investigations.
Broader concerns relating to the overhaul of the political system might come about as quickly as desired. The horizontal structure of the Flamingo Revolution is both its strength and weakness. By denouncing all major political parties, the movement is drawing support from a wide range of communities across political affiliations, but by the same token, it does not provide a clear political path beyond Rama’s resignation.
Protesters need to articulate a more concrete vision of economic development policies that support fair competition while also investing in infrastructure and social welfare institutions. Any vision of Albania’s political future must provide a clear strategy for dismantling the widespread client networks that have captured the state. Finally, new political parties need to incorporate internal mechanisms that avoid power grabs by individual strongmen like Berisha and Rama.
Albanians are fed up with authoritarian politics, arrogant statesmen, and foreign billionaire investors controlling their futures. The Flamingo Revolution could be just the start of a different future.
