Cameron turns on Israel over Gaza as he backs Turkey's bid to join EU

• Prime Minister David Cameron addresses business people at the Turkish CBI during his visit to Ankara yesterday. Picture: PA

Mr Cameron also used the speech in the Turkish capital Ankara to make one of the most open and harshly worded condemnations of Israeli policy by a UK prime minister in recent history, describing the Gaza Strip as a "prison camp".

The Prime Minister, speaking during a high-profile visit to Turkey, also criticised Israel for launching an attack on a convoy transporting Turkish activists and aid to Gaza in defiance of the Israeli government's blockade.

He called for a major change in trade links between Britain and Turkey, setting out an ambition of doubling their value over the next five years.

Speaking to business leaders the Prime Minister said Turkey was vital for the UK's economy, security and diplomacy.

Seeking to strengthen relations between the two countries, he criticised those who oppose Turkey joining the European Union, saying they made him "angry", and compared the opposition to Britain's exclusion from the EU's predecessor, the European Economic Community, in the 1960s, when France blocked the UK's application.

Mr Cameron said that Turkey was important in terms of security, diplomacy and economics and that the country could play a key role in building links with the Middle East.

Speaking to the Turkish parliament, the Prime Minister said the Israeli inquiry into the attack on the Gaza flotilla, when nine Turkish citizens died in the raid, had to be swift. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp," he said.

His stance on Turkey's EU membership puts him on a potential collision course with the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who promised in his election campaign in 2007 to stand firm against the move.

But Mr Cameron said Turkey would bring greater prosperity and political stability to the EU and said: "I want us to pave the road from Ankara to Brussels. I'm here to make the case for Turkey's membership of the EU. And to fight for it. We know what it's like to be shut out of the club. But we also know that these things can change.

"When I think about what Turkey has done to defend Europe as a Nato ally, and what Turkey is doing today in Afghanistan, alongside our European allies, it makes me angry that your progress towards EU membership can be frustrated in the way it has been."

Mr Cameron also praised Turkey as a fast-growing economic power that he said would be increasingly important and said this was a huge opportunity for British business.

Objections to Turkey's membership centre around its refusal to recognise EU member Cyprus, growing support for pro-Islamic parties on the mainland and human rights issues such as the treatment of the Kurdish minority in the country.

A spokesman from the French Embassy in London said: "We are in favour of the strongest bond between Turkey and Europe; but we are against Turkey's membership of the European Union. Nicolas Sarkozy made this plain to the French before his election and the French approved this choice."

Meanwhile, Israeli representatives in London said that a terrorism campaign from Hamas was to blame for the Gaza crisis.

A spokesman from the Israeli Embassy in the UK added: "We know that the Prime Minister would also share our grave concerns about our own prisoner in the Gaza Strip, Gilad Shalit, who has been held hostage there for over four years, without receiving a single Red Cross visit."

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