By Isaac Stanley-Becker | The Atlantic

In the summer of 2021, Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, were cruising the Mediterranean on a yacht when they stopped for a swim off the Adriatic coast. They arrived on an island and walked barefoot across its hilly, rugged terrain. “That’s actually how we found it,” the president’s eldest daughter would later recount. The Albanian island that the Trump heirs stumbled upon, Robinson Crusoe-like, is called Sazan, once the site of a top-secret military base. Sazan is not uncharted territory for Albanians; it’s their country’s largest island. Since it was uninhabited for many years, vegetation and wildlife have flourished, making it a treasured nature preserve. Luckily for the Trumps, Albania’s Prime Minister, Edi Rama, was a guest on the same yacht one of the nights they were aboard.

Three years later — and about two months after Donald Trump’s reelection in 2024 — an investment committee led by Rama gave preliminary approval to the couple’s plans to develop the island into a luxury resort. The venture is located on nearby land near a coastal lagoon, which serves as an important habitat for flamingos, sea turtles and other species. The couple’s partners in the project include a pair of Qatari brothers who have financed ultra-luxury developments throughout the Middle East and South Asia, and an Albanian conglomerate with interests in energy, construction, infrastructure, insurance and tourism. In a recent podcast interview, Ivanka Trump described the project as “the culmination of all my real estate experience, all my travels, a lot of reflection on how I want to live, how I think people increasingly want to live.”

Many Albanians see things differently. Hundreds of thousands of people have joined daily protests against the plans, in one of the country’s biggest social mobilizations since the end of communist rule 35 years ago. The uprising, called the Flamingo Revolution, takes its name from the wild birds that breed in the wetland habitat. Protesters have carried inflatable flamingos and banners with drawings.

The riots have it all: accusations of organized crime and drug trafficking, competing claims of foreign influence, a brief appearance by Kanye West. For the participants I spoke to, the demonstrations are about accumulated frustration with Albanian politicians who have failed to give the country a solid economic foundation. “You could interpret it as an anti-Trump demonstration in the sense that it’s against a Trump-like system that we see here,” Fatos Lubonja, a writer and dissident who was imprisoned during Albania’s communist dictatorship, told me: “government decisions made in secret, for the benefit of a few, motivated by money tied to oligarchs.”

The beauty of the landscape discovered by the American president’s daughter “belongs to all Albanians,” Lubonja said. He paraphrased Dostoevsky: “And beauty will save the world.” But Rama, a former professional artist, won’t listen. “They can lecture me on many things — on economics, on legal issues, on agriculture, on health care,” he said in a recent interview. “But there’s one thing no one can lecture me on, which is beauty.”

The Flamingo Revolution, at first glance, seems like the most unexpected anti-Trump protest. Albania, a nation of fewer than 3 million people, is one of the most pro-American countries in the world, and has been so since the United States opposed the partition of Albania in 1920. More recently, Washington supported Albania’s entry into NATO in 2009 and has maintained its security in a historically volatile region sometimes called the powder keg of Europe.

In the 18 months since Trump returned to power, I have traveled extensively to European countries with some of the strongest postwar ties to the United States, including Britain, Germany, and Denmark. One of the questions I hear most often is why Americans who oppose Trump are not organizing larger, more sustained demonstrations against him. The question arises especially when I ask European diplomats why their leaders are not more forcefully opposing an American president who insults them and contemplates annexing their territory. They return the question to me, asking: Why aren’t Americans rising up? Millions have marched in “No Kings” protests; the spring mobilization was one of the largest single-day protests in American history. Still, the question remains. Trump earned at least $2.2 billion during his first year in office, while wage growth has slowed. He is pursuing an unpopular war, unauthorized by Congress, and unsanctioned by international law. Even pro-American Europeans want to know: Why don't people take to the streets every day?

In Albania, a small country on Europe’s Balkan Peninsula, they are. Today marks the 54th consecutive day of protests sparked by the Trump family’s development project. Few would have thought of Albania as the center of the international anti-Trump opposition. But a tour of the country’s recent history suggests that this is not as unlikely as it seems.

Albania was once one of the most isolated countries in Europe. From the end of World War II until 1985, it was ruled by a ruthless and paranoid communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, whose fear of foreign invasion led to the construction of some 173,000 bunkers. Albania earned the nickname “the North Korea of ​​Europe.” The communist state was abolished in 1991, and the anti-communist opposition came to power in parliamentary elections a year later. But the transition to a market economy was not easy. Rapid privatization under a system known as “shock therapy” destroyed local industries and fueled mass unemployment. In 1997, the collapse of massive, state-sanctioned pyramid schemes wiped out the life savings of about two-thirds of Albanians. A small group of politicians have vied for control of the country ever since. Because of its recent experience, the population is highly attuned to the signs of autocracy, Dana Fisher, a sociologist at American University who has studied the demographics of the “No Kings” protests in the U.S., told me. Familiarity can breed complacency. But in this case, it’s inspiring fierce resistance.

The Trump family sparked the uprising, but the target of the protests is Rama. The leader of his country’s Socialist Party, Rama, came to power in 2013, while Albania was still shedding its insular identity. Albania became a candidate for membership in the European Union the following year. Rama was once a fierce critic of Trump, who greeted the tycoon’s possible nomination in 2016 with the words: “God save us!” He predicted harm not only for the United States but also for the “democratic world.”

Rama is now much more supportive. He hailed Trump’s “tremendous victory” in 2024 and, a year later, echoed the president’s claims of divine providence, adding: “When Trump says God saved him to make America great again, he’s only telling half the story. The other half is that he saved Trump too to make Europe wake up and act.” Rama is one of the only European leaders to accept an invitation to the Trump-chaired Peace Council. Domestically, he has tried to improve Albania’s economy by improving the hospitality industry. He told The Guardian last year: “We need luxury tourism like a desert needs water.”

This is in line with Kushner’s ambitions. “I was very, very impressed by his vision of what he wanted to do with Albania,” Trump’s son-in-law said at an investment conference. Kushner continued: “I really didn’t know anything about the country. I didn’t understand the history and the darkness of the history with communism, and the terrible leadership actually led to its complete underdevelopment as a nation.”

This is not Kushner’s first attempt at high-profile development in the Balkans. Last December, he backed out of plans to build a Trump Tower in Belgrade, on the site of the former Yugoslav defense ministry, which was bombed by NATO in 1999. His investment firm pulled out of the project hours after the country’s organized crime prosecutors indicted the culture minister for alleged falsification of documents as part of a process to strip the building of its cultural heritage status. The company issued a statement saying the plans would not proceed because “meaningful projects should unite, not divide.”

In Albania, people involved in the resort project claim that construction has not yet begun, even though environmental activists say fences have been erected, trees have been removed and sand dunes have been flattened. The country changed its environmental regulations in 2024, paving the way for development by lifting bans on construction in ecologically protected areas. The move prompted a warning from the European Parliament about compliance with environmental standards as part of Albania’s bid to join the bloc. Rama’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but Asher Abehsera, one of the Trumps’ partners in the venture, told me in a statement: “Our goal is simple: to celebrate Albania’s natural beauty, create jobs and build something that future generations can be proud of.”

He added: “Its future will ultimately be determined by Albania and the Albanian people.”

Large-scale demonstrations began in Albania in late May after a video circulated of private security guards punching and dragging a protester along a beach in Zvërnec, the coastal enclave where part of the Trump family’s project is planned. “That was the turning point,” said Ditmir Bushati, a former Albanian foreign minister. “It started as a dispute about access to the sea and access to nature, and it transformed within days into a protest about who should decide the future of the country.”

Thousands of people rallied in Tirana, the capital, with banners proclaiming that the nation was not for sale and declaring, “I don’t want Albania like Dubai.” Rama also stood his ground, issuing a statement saying, “There is absolutely no chance that investment will stop as long as I am here.” As the protests grew, they became a platform for wild speculation and conspiracy theories. Some protesters saw parallels with Kushner’s support for a proposed “Gaza Riviera,” fearing that Albanian land would be used to relocate Palestinians. Online commentators further called the development “another Epstein Island,” a reference to the former sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s hideouts in the U.S. Virgin Islands. A separate controversy, over government-backed plans for a Kanye West concert outside Tirana, added to the discontent. Attention came from all ideological sides. Senator Bernie Sanders welcomed the protests as dissent against the “global oligarchy.” Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist, excited about an imminent “civil war.”

The prime minister argued that the protests were hijacked by foreign actors, blaming “Trump haters” as well as “enemies of Israel and Albania.” Albania, where about half the population is Muslim, has strong ties to Israel rooted in historical goodwill. During World War II, Albanians motivated by an ancient code of honor called besa, literally “to keep one’s promise,” hid thousands of Jewish refugees; it was the only European country with more Jewish residents after the Holocaust than before. In this century, Albania made itself a target of the Iranian regime when it agreed, at the request of the United States and the United Nations in 2013, to shelter exiled members of the dissident group Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MEK. In 2022, Albania expelled Iranian diplomats after concluding that Tehran was behind a wave of cyberattacks targeting government institutions and critical infrastructure. In recent weeks, Rama has accused Iran of waging a “hybrid war” by spreading disinformation about development and inciting opposition to his government’s plans. Iran has denied the accusations.

The protesters appear determined to prove that the uprising is authentic and indigenous. Bushati, the former foreign minister, has called the protests “the best investment in our image as a people and in our path towards the European Union.” He said up to 200,000 people mobilized over the July 4 weekend and dismissed claims of foreign interference. “Iran has no influence in Albania,” he said. “This is a country that lives happily in the orbit of the United States.”

Iranian influence hardly seems necessary to destabilize the resort’s plans. The land on which part of the project is planned is disputed. Sazani, the island, is state-owned, so a lease would ultimately be necessary; the Trump-linked consortium currently has what is called “strategic investor” status, which helps expedite permits and negotiations for a long-term deal. The coastal land in Zvërnec, however, is private. Entities linked to the Trumps bought it from a Miami-based businessman, Artur Shehu, who insists his family’s claim to the land dates back to Ottoman times. Locals in Zvërnec argue that they are the rightful owners. It’s a messy picture because the land was requisitioned by the state during the communist era; when the properties returned to private hands in the 1990s, ownership was often contested.

The saga became much more dramatic this summer, when an Albanian agency dedicated to fighting financial crimes, the Special Structure Against Corruption and Organized Crime, said it was investigating whether Shehu had forged property ownership deeds. The discovery of whether he has legal title to the land is just one part of a broader investigation by the agency into allegations that Shehu and his associates trafficked cocaine to European ports and then laundered money for real estate projects. A message sent to a number linked to Shehu went unanswered; his lawyer denied the allegations to Reuters. The Trumps and their venture partners are not accused of wrongdoing. A spokesman for the venture said: “The Albanian legal system is the appropriate place to resolve issues regarding land ownership and the integrity of previous transactions. We respect this process and, as always, will cooperate with any legal process as necessary.”

The Flamingo Revolution reflects dissatisfaction with Albania’s democratic institutions 35 years after the fall of communism. Yet the popular mobilization, combined with the anti-corruption investigation that seeks to substantiate some of its key claims, is evidence of democratic maturity. Albanian society has developed antibodies to signs of state capture. The irony is that an initiative originating from the family of the American president would elicit such a strong immune response.