For Ina Shkurti, like so many Albanians, the island of Sazan has played an outsized role. As a child she bathed in its “always calm and emerald green” waters, as a teenager it figured in her dreams and as an adult it was an indelible part of the memory and desire that drew her back, every summer, to Vlore, her home town across the sea.

What Shkurti never imagined was that plans to build a mega-resort on Sazan – one of two luxurious resorts on Albania’s southern coast backed by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner – would trigger a revolt, an uprising that has convulsed the Balkan state in a spasm of disgust over the perceived excesses of “a rotten oligarchic class” just as it hopes to complete accession talks with the EU.

“Am I outraged? Of course I am,” the cartographer said as the contours of the uninhabited outcrop came into view from a speedboat scudding towards its shores. “Sazan is our only island. It’s a small paradise that holds a special place in the hearts and minds of Albanians. Having some rich couple come in, develop it, and then deny us access, would be a crime.”

Not since the collapse of communism, more than three decades ago, has Albania been shaken by such collective fury. At 32, Shkurti, whose family emigrated to the US when she was 11, is typical of the tens of thousands, both in and outside the country, who have taken to the streets in what has become known as the “flamingo revolution” because of the threat posed by the proposed resorts to wildlife and delicate ecosystems on the sites.

“This government no longer represents us,” she said. “It has chosen to represent oligarch investors like Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. These protests are not going to stop, even if they’re no longer exclusively about them.”

Every day, she said, friends from Albania’s diaspora were flying in to join the rallies. In the biggest so far, thousands converged on Tirana at the weekend, many travelling from the US and other parts of Europe, to add their voices to the wave of dissent.

In a country with almost no tradition of civic unrest, the protests, both leaderless and non-partisan, have caught officials in Tirana and the EU off guard. Increasingly, demonstrators have in their sights a political establishment blamed for the country’s chaotic transition from repressive Stalinist rule. Fears of crisis are mounting.

Amid daily calls for his resignation, Edi Rama, the prime minister, has chosen to respond with nervousness, humour and barely concealed ire. But the veteran socialist, previously feted in Brussels for his visionary policies and an artist with a jovial disposition in more peaceful times, has also refused to back down. Elected for a fourth term last year on a vow to get the once isolated country into the EU, he has described the €1.4bn investment as vital if Albania is to become the Mediterranean’s “most attractive high-end tourist destination”.

“You have to ask where all of this is going,” said Afrim Krasniqi, the director of the Albanian Institute for Political Studies, who does not rule out demonstrators adopting “more radical” protest measures. “The government, it seems, doesn’t want to believe that all these people out on the streets are against it. This absence of dialogue, this lack of empathy, this refusal to want to find a solution, is dangerous.”

Three weeks have elapsed since the protests first erupted after bulldozers began clearing clusters of forest and ancient dunes to make way for construction in a protected conservation zone across the water from Sazan.

The Pishë Poro-Narta reserve, home to one of Europe’s last wild rivers, encompasses much of the Zvërnec peninsula, its sandy shores protecting an inland lagoon that is a major migratory route for hundreds of rare birds and more than 70 endangered species.

Tensions rose here – the first site slated for development – when opponents confronted private security contractors who had hastily erected a fence to keep the public out. In the mayhem that ensued, as demonstrators tried to scale the barrier, a local landowner was filmed being dragged by guards, his handcuffed body bumping over the rocky terrain as witnesses looked on aghast. Police officers, controversially, chose not to intervene.

In a podcast released the next day, Ivanka Trump waxed lyrical about the real estate venture and “this beautiful peninsula with a lagoon on one side, the ocean on the other” that she and her husband, as lead investors in the project, intended to transform. “It’s massive in scale,” she said of the plans to develop Sazan, a former Soviet-era military installation whose verdant landscape of wild fig trees and flowers is dotted with derelict buildings once used by personnel and their families. “Not only the island, but we have 5 miles of beachfront directly across from [it],” the US president’s daughter enthused, referring to the shoreline within view of this month’s violent scenes.

“People became very angry,” said Kostantin Xhaho, an environmentalist based in Vlore. “After all, Sazan is a historic monument. I’ve got friends who grew up in those buildings and both the island and Zvërnec are important habitats for flamingos, monk seals and loggerhead sea turtles. This idea of a 10,000-room resort being built on the peninsula sparked what I think you would call an explosion.”

The prospect of what critics condemned as the “the worst kind of global elite” plundering natural reserves in a country that remains one of Europe’s poorest soon tapped into deep anger over depredations highlighting other inequalities.

The development was granted preliminary approval after the Albanian parliament amended stringent laws safeguarding environmentally sensitive zones – although there is no evidence Kushner had any role in the change. Indicative of the perceived lack of transparency around the project, opponents claim the investors remain a mystery, their identities concealed behind a multi-layered shell company in the Netherlands. Continuing court cases over property disputes in Zvërnec have also played into popular anger.

“What we want is a new Albania,” said Justina Prenga, 24, who recently travelled from the northern city of Shkodër to join protesters in the capital, where cries of “Rama ik” (Rama resign) are heard nightly outside the shuttered 1930s building that houses the prime minister’s office. “We’re gen Z and we’re saying ‘enough is enough’, our country isn’t for sale.”

The outcry, she said, had gone “way beyond” the Kushners, even if her friends didn’t know “whether to laugh or cry” when in the podcast they heard Trump’s “Christopher Columbus-style” account of discovering Sazan. “We want this project stopped, but really, it’s about everything that is wrong with Albania. Sali Berisha should also resign. He made our country what it is today, so he should go to jail too,” she said of the main opposition leader, a former president and prime minister at one time barred from entering the UK because of his alleged links to crime and corruption.

Draped in a giant red and back Albanian flag, Lizander Saraci agreed. A risk manager at a private bank, he is typical of an older generation that has also joined the movement.

“It’s been more than 30 years and still our hospitals are terrible, our education system is shit, there are no jobs and everyone is leaving,” said the father of two, who frequently attends the rallies with his children. “The demonstrations are huge because people are tired of this injustice. They’re tired of all the corruption. One of our slogans is ‘stop the dictatorship of dirty money’ because we’ve learned from experience that similar projects only ever benefit a wealthy few.”

Last week, the European parliament also weighed in. In a resolution, MEPs backed the protesters, urging the government to halt further construction in protected zones. Some decried the “predatory capitalists” who had exploited legislation allowing strategic investors to accelerate similar projects – a law Brussels has branded unfair and long asked Tirana to repeal. EU officials say that without agreement on the environmental laws, accession negotiations cannot be concluded. “We would expect Albania, a year and a half away from this target … to have aligned itself with these [EU] standards,” Silvio Gonzato, the EU’s ambassador to Albania, said.

Again Rama stood his ground as he reacted to the EU parliament’s vote, pledging to continue the Zvërnec development “based on an environmental impact assessment according to European Union standards”.

He has repeatedly called what is Albania’s biggest investment ever “a blessing” that will not only provide badly needed jobs but “ultimately result in approximately 25 % more trees and green space”.

Last year the 3 million-strong country attracted about 12 million tourists, many lured as much by its natural beauty as its affordability. “This is also about direction,” said Shkurti. “Do we really want that kind of development when, clearly, the infrastructure can hardly cope?”

But Rama has his supporters. Albert Pushka, the owner of a newly opened fish restaurant outside Vlore, is so enthusiastic he has named the enterprise Ivanka. When asked about the development, Walter Dimraj, 48, gave a Trump-like thumbs-up and said: “Albania has to grow up. It has to seize this chance. If we don’t do it, the Greeks will.”

Elpiniqi Merkuri , a psychologist who heads Vlore’s municipal council, is convinced the resort will help boost confidence at a time when the older generation still “cannot find the courage” to talk about the brutality of the past. “People tend to feel calmer and more optimistic when they see development, new opportunities and well-designed environments,” she said, as cows and sheep sauntered around the area where construction workers recently broke ground.

Standing by the salt flats overlooking the lagoon, Ledi Selgjekaj wishes she could agree. This is where the young ornithologist has come for the past five years, rising at dawn to monitor the behaviour and breeding patterns of shore birds.

“Back then, they had just begun construction work on Vlore’s new international airport,” she said, looking through her binoculars beyond the wetlands towards its tower. “And that is when we began to see ecological corridors being disrupted and jackals and other predators targeting wildlife in the lagoon.”

Flamingos and their egg-laden nests were especially affected, she said. “The airport, when it begins operating, is going to be a disaster. If these resorts go ahead it will be the kiss of death.”