David Cameron shows he is prepared for an EU battle over Turkey

The European Union has perfected the art in recent years of offending Turkey.

I remember a miserable evening in Luxembourg in 2005, during the British presidency of the EU, when formal membership negotiations with Turkey were meant to open. A predictable snag within the EU meant that foreign ministers, under the chairmanship of Jack Straw, could not confirm that the talks would actually begin.

Abdullah Gul, then the Turkish foreign minister who is now the country's president, is no fool. And so he told the foreign ministers that he would not sit in a hotel room in Luxembourg while the EU foreign ministers worked through their differences.

A message was sent from Ankara: Gul would put his plane on standby and would only fly to Luxembourg when there was a clear green light. This duly flickered into life at around 8.00pm. Gul set off and arrived in the early hours to allow the membership negotiations to be opened formally.

As Turkey's greatest champion in the EU, the British were furious that the union had once again managed to send such an unfriendly signal to Ankara. Officials wondered whether Gul would wonder, as he looked out of his plane's window as it made its way across the EU, whether Turkey would want to bother joining at all.

The dreadful start to the negotiations was a sign of what was to follow. For five years the talks have stalled.

Britain admits that Turkey is not blameless. It needs to do more to introduce liberalising domestic reforms. Ankara also needs to open up its ports to Cypriot goods.

But there is a barrier that is probably insurmountable. France and Germany are opposed to Turkish membership, with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, suggesting Ankara should be offered a "privileged partnership".

Two EU member states on their own would not normally be able to block such a strategically significant step as admitting Turkey. But as the EU's two largest founding member states, France and Germany enjoy special status. Their views are also reflected across much of the rest of Europe.

David Cameron waded into this highly sensitive issue today when he used a speech to make clear that he fully endorses Britain's long-held view that Turkey should be allowed a seat, as he says, at the European top table. But the prime minister went a lot further than his immediate predecessors who were careful not to upset the French and the Germans.

The prime minister used unusually strong language as he accused Europe of double standards for expecting Turkey to guard the camp, with the second largest army in Nato, while denying it access to the tent. But Cameron made clear that he is prepared for a battle with France when he drew a comparison between the hostility to Turkey and General Charles de Gaulle's "non" to British membership of the EEC.

The prime minister has delivered a series of carefully constructed and highly polished speeches in the two-and-a-half months since he entered Downing Street. But this is the first time he has used his oratorical skills to give such a powerful display of his anger to Britain's two closest European partners.