Albania is in the midst of a ‘Flamingo Revolution’, sparked by Ivanka Trump’s plans to turn a rural island into a luxury hotel.
Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka is reportedly going ahead with her plans to transform a Cold War-era military base into a luxury island resort alongside her husband, Jared Kushner.
Sazan is Albania’s largest island and is a designated military exclusion zone located in a strategically important location between the Strait of Otranto and the mouth of the Bay of Vlorë.
It’s also home to Europe’s last wild river delta, which is home to the critically endangered Balkan lynx, Mediterranean monk seal and thousands of pink flamingos.
Kushner and Trump’s proposed project, which is backed by investors from Saudi Arabia, would cripple the already fragile ecosystem.
Activists have clashed with police at the site, hanging up signs like ‘Albania is not for sale,’ ‘Hands off Albanian soil’ and ‘Sazan is not a private island, it belongs to the Albanian people.’
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‘From start to finish there has been a total lack of transparency,’ Aleksandër Trajçe, executive director of the country’s leading conservation group, the Protection and Preservation of the Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA), told The Guardian.
‘We have seen no public consultation or public documentation regarding permits, and so now what we are saying is, if they remove the bulldozers, remove the fence and restore the habitats to what they were, then we can start talking.’
It’s also a moment of reckoning for the Albanian government, led by Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Rama told CNN: ‘The challenge is not to pour concrete over the heads of flamingos. The challenge is to prove that development and nature can not only coexist, but that nature and development need each other.’
But thousands are taking to the streets as part of the Flamingo Revolution to protest not just the development, but other frustrations with the Albanian government’s approach to land access.
An investigation has already been launched by Albania’s anti-corruption office into how Kushner was able to purchase the land while bypassing the normal system of public tenders for contracts.
In Albania, the law states that sea and sand are public property – but newly erected fences on the island have sparked further anger.
A newly passed law in 2024 allows ‘structures of excellence, five stars or more’ to be built in environmentally protected areas.
Melitjan Nezaj, an environmental biologist at the Albanian organisation Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA), told CNN: ‘The project is quite destructive, since it’s actually planned to be built within a protected area, within a protected landscape, which is actually one of the most intact wetlands in the Mediterranean.’
For now, Trump appears to be going ahead with the project. Ivanka told a podcast recently: ‘You can’t just, like, impose yourself upon a country or culture — you have to understand it first to do it in a beautiful and delicate and meaningful way.’
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