Albania's "flamingo revolution" has outgrown its original cause: protesters want both Rama and Berisha gone, PM blames Iran

Two weeks after bulldozers rolled onto the Albanian coast for the luxury resort of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, the "flamingo revolution" stopped being about birds. Protesters in Tirana are no longer just demanding the project's cancellation — they are chanting "Rama to prison, Berisha to prison" and want the entire political class gone that has ruled the country since the fall of communism. Politico writes about what may be the largest wave of protests in Albania in thirty years; instead of answering, Prime Minister Edi Rama pointed the finger at Iran — and the dispute escalated into a diplomatic rift.

Politico's framing: a revolt nobody wanted

Brussels-based Politico frames the events in Albania as a revolt that Kushner triggered unintentionally. In two weeks, a local dispute over a few kilometers of coastline near Vlora turned into a nationwide movement that, according to the paper, "cuts across all social strata" and, according to observers, may be the largest since the country broke with communism more than three decades ago. Politico Europe ↗

Prime Minister Rama himself gave the paper a line that protesters took as confirmation of their fears: "If it weren't for Jared, nobody would care what's happening in Albania." He defends the project — a resort with up to ten thousand rooms on the island of Sazan and near the Narta lagoon — as an opportunity for the impoverished coast, and dismisses the protests as a "politically motivated campaign" by Trump's critics. Politico Europe ↗ For the Slovak reader, there is a shift here: whereas a few days ago this was about flamingos and an endangered lagoon, now the question at stake is who Albanian land belongs to.

Also read: How the Swiss press reads Albania's flamingo revolution: it's not about birds, but about the prime minister

The target is the whole class, not just Rama

The biggest change from the first days is the address of the anger. The slogan "Rama to prison, Berisha to prison" has been heard from the crowd since early June — aimed equally at the prime minister and at opposition leader Sali Berisha, a former president and prime minister, who also supported the project. Euronews ↗ "This is a demonstration of what has been happening in Albania for the past thirty-five years," one protester told Al Jazeera. "Enough is enough." Al Jazeera ↗

At the same time, the protest is spreading across the country. On Saturday, June 13, about two hundred people tore down barbed-wire fences around another construction project — near the village of Rrjoll in the north, close to Shkodra, where locals claim construction is taking place on their confiscated land. "We are two hundred families who had our land taken away," one of the landowners told Reuters. Reuters / The Independent ↗ This project too was granted "strategic investor" status by the government — the same instrument used for the coastal project near Vlora. Meanwhile, the special prosecution service SPAK has frozen the accounts of the company that was buying up the coastline for the Vlora project, and is investigating whether the land transfers and the change in protected-area status were fraudulent. OCCRP ↗

Rama's defense: Iran is to blame

The prime minister has chosen an unusual culprit. Since June 5, he has been speaking of "hybrid warfare" and "enemies of Albania and Israel," attributing the protests to bots and "antisemitic narratives." Euronews ↗ A few days later he added a message aimed directly at Tehran: "Your regime knows how to hack networks, imprison critics, censor voices, and threaten neighbors." Iran, through foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei, rejected the accusation as unfounded and ridiculed it; the dispute escalated into a diplomatic rift. Euronews ↗

Rama's card is not pulled entirely out of thin air: Albania hosts Iranian dissidents from the Mujahedin-e Khalq movement, and in 2022 it cut diplomatic ties with Tehran over a massive Iranian cyberattack. Critics, however, point out that an external enemy is a convenient way to deflect attention from a domestic affair about land, money, and transparency.

The limits of this view

Both Politico and the American weekly The Nation, on which this angle draws, belong to the liberal press critical of the Trump camp — the framing of "a Balkan strongman selling out his homeland to American billionaires" fits them naturally. The Nation ↗ They give less emphasis to the fact that Rama won parliamentary elections for a fourth time last year, and that part of the impoverished coast genuinely craves investment and jobs; the prime minister also claims that the contract has not been finalized and that the environmental impact assessment has not begun.

Caution is also warranted with the numbers: the opposition and the government differ sharply in their crowd estimates — independent media consistently speak only of "thousands" of protesters, not the "hundreds of thousands" claimed in opposition slogans. And while the Iran card is readable as deflection, dismissing it outright would also be an oversimplification.

What hotinfo is watching

• SPAK — whether the investigation into coastal land transfers and the 2024 change to the protected-areas law will result in charges.
• Rrjoll, Shkodra, and other locations — whether it is confirmed that "strategic investor" status is a template for land seizures across the country, not just near Vlora.
• Brussels — the European Commission warned Tirana in early June that the project could burden accession negotiations; we are watching whether this is reflected in the assessment report.
• Rama versus the street — whether the four-time prime minister backs down under pressure or escalates the rhetoric about an external enemy.
• The dispute with Iran — whether the mutual accusations turn into a real diplomatic crisis or fizzle out.

Photo: Terfili / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0