For days now, the streets of Tirana have filled with Albanians who refuse to stay quiet. The chant echoing off the buildings is blunt: “Albania is not for sale.” Police have answered with water cannons, and the clashes have only grown as the demonstrations stretch across multiple days in the heart of the Albanian capital.
What set it off is a luxury development backed by Jared Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, and tied to Ivanka Trump. The plan would push coastal construction into the protected Vjosa-Narta lagoon, a designated wildlife reserve, and build a resort on Sazan island, a former communist-era military base off the Albanian coast. For many Albanians, the project has become a flashpoint over national identity, public land, and who gets to decide the future of the country’s shoreline.
A protected lagoon and a former military island
The two pieces of the development have drawn the sharpest criticism. The Vjosa-Narta lagoon is a protected zone that shelters migratory birds and rare coastal ecosystems, the kind of habitat that conservationists say cannot simply be rebuilt once it is paved over. Sazan island, meanwhile, carries its own weight in the Albanian imagination: a former military outpost from the communist era, long off-limits to the public, now slated to host a high-end resort.
Critics argue that turning these places into a luxury getaway hands a politically connected foreign venture control over land that was supposed to belong to everyone. Supporters counter that the project represents investment and jobs for a developing economy still working to attract international capital.
Environmental groups warn of irreversible damage
Environmental groups say the damage is already visible. They report habitat destruction inside the protected zone, including a mapped sea-turtle nesting site that sits in the path of the project. For a lagoon that functions as a stopover and shelter for migratory wildlife, conservationists warn that the build-out could be irreversible — that once the bulldozers move in, the ecosystem they support may not recover.
That concern has become a rallying cry for the protesters, many of whom frame the fight not just as opposition to one development but as a stand for the country’s natural heritage. The image of a sea-turtle nest in the path of a luxury resort has come to symbolize, for them, everything they say is wrong with the deal.
An anticorruption investigation opens
The pushback isn’t only in the streets. Albania’s special anticorruption prosecutor has opened an investigation into the deal, raising hard questions about how a foreign-backed luxury project landed inside one of the country’s most protected natural areas. The probe signals that the controversy has moved beyond public anger and into the realm of formal legal scrutiny — a development that could shape whether, and how, the project moves forward.
For protesters, the investigation is validation of what they have been shouting in the squares: that decisions of this scale, involving protected land and powerful interests, deserve transparency and accountability rather than quiet approval.
A fight over who the coastline belongs to
Supporters frame the development as investment and jobs for a developing economy. Protesters see something else: a wealthy, politically connected venture carving up public land that was supposed to be off-limits. The clash between those two visions has played out in the standoffs with police, the water cannons, and the chants that keep returning night after night.
As the crowds keep coming back, the fight over who Albania’s coastline belongs to is far from over. With an anticorruption probe now underway and environmental groups documenting damage on the ground, the pressure on officials is mounting. What happens next in Tirana may determine not only the fate of one resort, but the precedent for how protected land and political power collide in Albania for years to come.