The only way for Turkey to extricate itself from crippling wars and exploitation of workers is by reigniting peace talks with the Kurdish movement, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Pervin Buldan said on Sunday.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, together with its far-right ally the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), has implemented a system of exploitation through its policies of war, Buldan said at the HDP’s “We are the solution” rally in Istanbul on Sunday.

The government continues to hold imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan in solitary confinement because it fears peace and negotiations with the Kurdish political movement, Buldan said.

“As soon as the isolation is lifted and Mr. Öcalan steps in, everyone in this country will once again begin to look to their future with hope,” Buldan said.

Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has been held in the maximum-security prison on İmralı island since his capture in 1999. The PKK, which the Turkish government defines as a terrorist organisation, has fought for Kurdish self-rule and basic cultural and linguistic rights in Turkey since the 1980s.

Today, rather than striving to end conflicts in Turkey, the AKP government has gone to war with society, Buldan said.

She said the AKP had dragged Turkey into poverty while pursuing its various cross-border military operations. “This country never deserves these wars and this country is not condemned to these wars,” she said.

Since the breakdown of peace talks with the PKK in 2015, Turkey has launched a series of military operations against Kurdish groups in southeast Turkey, northern Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan. Over the same period, the country’s economy has floundered through currency crises, high inflation and a fall in GDP.

“Turkey is not compelled to accept this government. This country is not condemned to this government’s war policies and denial policies,” Buldan said, urging citizens to seek an inclusive alternative to the AKP.

Every single bullet, every single war bomb, to be fired, to be shot, pushes this country, the labourers of this country, the workers of this country, the women of this country deeper into poverty, deeper into misery, never thinking of the youth of this country, this country’s tomorrows.” she said

“There is a different option, a different way – the line of the HDP, which we call the Third Way. We have a third option,” she said.

Turkey needs an honourable peace, Buldan added. “Yes, this [Third Way] alliance is the alliance of the future. It is a whole with its Turks, Kurds, Alevis, Armenians, Assyrians, women and youths. The peoples of Turkey will build the future together with this alliance.”