The Flamingo Revolution in Albania: Anatomy of another Colour Revolution

Protests against the government in Tirana on June 13, 2026 -- Albinfo, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Biljana Vankovska

When one has witnessed not only a colour revolution in her own country (Macedonia, 2015–2016) but also sensed its arrival during Ukraine’s Euromaidan in 2014, every new outburst of supposedly spontaneous revolt provokes scepticism. Regrettably, this scepticism is usually justified. Nearly two years ago, I wrote similarly about student protests in Serbia and later about Nepal. The point is this: for those of us on the periphery, when you have seen one ‘revolution’ of this industrial kind, you have seen them all. Unfortunately or not, their outcomes are nearly identical: nothing essential changes after the supposed revolution succeeds. Its purpose was never radical transformation, but regime change in service of some geopolitical actor.

Of course, the United States remains unmatched in this domain, despite initial measures during Donald Trump’s second term aimed at curbing the mechanisms of ‘soft regime change’ through the NGO-ization of social movements. But business continues as usual, as long as it delivers results, including the destabilization of unfriendly regimes.

Every colour revolution unfolds within a specific historical, national, and social context. This explains the initial confusion and the tendency to believe one’s own case is unique and authentic. Wishful thinking is especially strong in left-leaning intellectual circles. I myself encountered great difficulty publishing an article on the chimera of the Colourful Revolution in Macedonia because two editors of a French journal could not believe that what I described was not spontaneous collective action. Every claim had to be documented in detail.

A further factor is rapid forgetting. In conversations with younger colleagues from Maribor and Novi Sad, I realized they had barely registered the Macedonian experience from a decade ago. No lesson seems to be learned. While they spoke enthusiastically about plenums and the spontaneous energy of youth protests, I could not help but think of the disappointment that tends to follow.

The most subtle mechanism of colour (or template) revolutions is not their invention, but their structural appropriation. The roots of discontent are real, but their political instrumentalisation is externally constructed. Gene Sharp, whose theories of ‘nonviolent struggle’ became a handbook for colour revolutions, explicitly described these tactics as a form of ‘political jiu-jitsu,’ turning the regime’s own weight against itself—but in service of geopolitical interests unrelated to local emancipation.

The same pattern is now unfolding in Albania, following resistance to investment and corruption schemes involving members of the Trump family and the exploitation of natural resources, including flamingo habitats. What a symbolic convergence: what a beautiful colour, and what a fitting emblem. Prime Minister Edi Rama, against whom massive protests have emerged (not only within Albania but also among Albanians from Kosovo and North Macedonia), has inadvertently given the movement its name: the Flamingo Revolution. The pink bird has become the symbol of a broad anti-government mobilisation calling for Rama’s resignation and the cancellation of a €1.4 billion luxury resort project linked to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, planned for the protected Vjosa–Narta wetland ecosystem.

The trickiest aspect of recognising colour revolutions is precisely their foundation: the existence of genuine grievances. These are real and cannot be externally invented. What external actors do exceptionally well, especially since 2000 and the fall of Milošević in Belgrade, is identify these real societal fractures—corruption, poverty, inequality, repression—and then build a ‘revolutionary vanguard’ upon them. In reality, this vanguard already exists: in NGO networks cultivated for decades within the discourse of Western liberal values, and among younger generations sincerely seeking change—usually interpreted as EU and NATO integration as pathways to prosperity. The innocence of youth, in the eyes of a resigned public exhausted by decades of failed transitions, gives such movements a moral aura. Any scepticism is quickly dismissed as cynicism: how can one doubt ‘unspoiled’ youth?

I have myself been in that position. In the autumn of 2014, my students asked for support in mobilising the academic community during the student plenums. There are photographs of me then, even with tears in my eyes, moved by their energy. It did not take long, however, to realise that prior to approaching me, they had already undergone informal training within Soros-linked networks. But by then, the process had already been set in motion. The movement produced its political outcome: the rise of Zoran Zaev, supported by external actors, who ultimately implemented the name change and opened the path toward NATO membership.

Participants in that Macedonian ‘revolution’ today barely recall it. Zaev achieved his assigned political function and has since withdrawn into private business interests. Similar patterns are visible elsewhere. Srećko Horvat once described the student plenums in Serbia as ‘geopolitical orphans’, movements whose ultimate direction remained unclear, including the question of who benefits from political change and toward which foreign policy orientation it leads.

In Albania, paradoxically, this ambiguity is less visible. The country is widely perceived as firmly pro-Western, often among the most enthusiastic supporters of the United States in the region. At the EU–Western Balkans summit in Tivat recently, Albania was praised as a frontrunner in accession progress. Yet in a fragmented West, temptations multiply. Just as Belgrade elites were willing to negotiate major concessions in real estate projects linked to Kushner, or as Republika Srpska’s leadership sought proximity to Trump-aligned networks, similar calculations appear in Tirana, including controversial investment schemes on Sazan Island.

To be clear: Albanian society has every reason for dissatisfaction. Its culture of solidarity and resistance is also real. The flamingos are not the cause of the protest, but their symbolic trigger—just as in Serbia the Novi Sad tragedy became an ignition point. What is striking, however, is the recurring romanticisation of such movements by parts of the Western left, which too quickly interpret them as pure emancipatory uprisings.

Even where direct evidence of institutional coordination is difficult to establish, figures such as Alex Soros have openly demonstrated political engagement within the Democratic Party sphere, while the broader Soros network has long been embedded in the region. Tirana remains a regional hub of this infrastructure, which has shaped multiple generations of activists oriented toward Western integration.

The era of purely spontaneous revolutions is largely over. Even when material incentives like ‘sandwiches and tea’ are absent, as in Kyiv in 2014, modern protest movements require organisation, logistics, funding, and professional communication infrastructure. Protests have become, in a sense, an industry—expensive, coordinated, and short-lived in their radical potential. They increasingly reflect intra-Western political struggles, rather than purely local emancipatory projects.

The Financial Times reported Rama’s remark: ‘There is a lot of interest to kill this project … because of Trump. If it were not Jared Kushner … nobody would give a damn about flamingos, about Albania, about nothing.’ He may be a crook, but he may be right on this point. On the other hand, obviously, his government has been sandwiched in the intra-West rupture.

No one can reasonably fail to applaud a mass movement resisting corrupt power that sells out its country and claims to defend the environment, ecology, and even flamingos. But this should not lead to the illusion that it represents a genuine turning point in Albania (or in Serbia, for the same reasons). The Balkans remain a space where great powers—and their internal factions—settle accounts and negotiate transactions over the region. But this legitimacy should not be confused with political autonomy. The Balkans remain a space where local grievances are frequently absorbed into larger geopolitical and intra-Western rivalries. The flamingo is indeed a beautiful bird, but it too becomes part of the scenario.

As Đorđe Balašević once sang: ‘The principle is the same, everything else is nuances.’

Ultimately, what distinguishes structural appropriation from authentic social mobilisation is not the existence of real grievances (they exist everywhere) but the political economy of protest: who funds it, who organises it, and whose interests it ultimately serves. When the answer consistently points toward Western foundations, NGO networks, and alignment with Euro-Atlantic structures, we are not witnessing emancipatory rupture, but the managed circulation of dissent within an established geopolitical framework.

The anger of Balkan societies is real. So is their energy… while it lasts. Without autonomous political organisation and critical distance from external infrastructures of influence, that energy risks being channelled once again into the reproduction of the same system under new symbolic forms.

The flamingos will fly away. The structures will remain.

Biljana Vankovska is a professor of political science and international relations at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, the president of Synergia Orbi: Institute for Global Analysis in Skopje, and the most influential public intellectual in Macedonia. She is a member of the No Cold War collective.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.