The word "limit" is derived etymologically from the Latin limes, meaning boundary, notably of the Roman Empire. Hence liminal, a word that has become fashionable in the study of borderlines and identity construction, especially of hybrid or multiple identities thrown up by the disintegration and integration of contemporary political communities.
Just such a process is under way as the European Union prepares to decide at Luxembourg in two weeks time on the candidates for accession. Eleven states are lined up for this continental enlargement. In alphabetical order they are: Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
They have been selected, ranked and graded by the European Commission in its Agenda 2000 document, published in July, according to objective criteria laid down at the Copenhagen Council in 1993. These cover politics, where functioning democratic states are invited to apply; economics, where a functioning market economy is regarded as an essential prerequisite; and an ability to take on the EU's acquis, its accumulated body of law, as well as its overall objectives.
Discussion at the Luxembourg Council will be concentrated on the optimal strategy for handling this complex negotiation, especially on whether it is best to proceed as recommended by the Commission, by selecting five states - Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic - plus Cyprus, as most qualified according to the criteria; or whether to open with all 11 and only later to differentiate between them.
But there is one important exception in the Commission's list of 11 candidates for accession - Turkey. It concluded an accession treaty with the EEC in 1963. In its preamble and its text full membership was set as the final objective for both parties. It also envisaged a customs union, which was eventually concluded in 1995 and is now in operation - so far without the benefit of the transfers agreed then, which have been blocked by a Greek veto. Turkey revived its application again in 1987, to be told in 1989 that while it was eligible to join, it was not envisaged that the EC would enlarge at that time, but that its application stood on the record.
The Turkish State Minister for European Affairs, Prof Sukru Sina Gurel, has been in Dublin for the last three days pressing his government's case in advance of the Luxembourg summit (as more briefly, was the Slovenian prime minister). The minister reminded an audience at the Institute of European Affairs that EU foreign ministers agreed earlier this year to judge Turkey's application by the same criteria as the others.
But he went on to say that "unfortunately, the expectations created at those meetings did not materialise" in the Commission's Agenda 2000 document. "By not including Turkey in the enlargement process, the Commission clearly disregarded the eligibility of Turkey for full membership".
He expects the Luxembourg summit to take the final decisions on the matter. He wants it to "lead to a clear-cut decision on Turkey's inclusion in the enlargement process". An invitation should be issued to participate on equal terms with all other active candidates for membership in a standing European conference bringing together the 15 existing members and the 12 prospective ones; and Turkey should be offered a pre-accession strategy "designed to help it reach the standards of full membership".
The minister emphasised that Turkey accepts the Copenhagen criteria. "We welcome them and see them as standards we should achieve for our own people, which they deserve to come up to".
Clearly they are seen as benchmarks, which will provide an incentive for modernisation and development, especially in the human rights sphere.
Prof Gurel, an historian, also emphasised Turkey's European history and vocation. The Ottoman empire was a European power, after all, albeit not a Christian one. It is also worth recalling that the limits of the Roman Empire roughly coincided with Turkey's present-day eastern borders with Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia and Georgia.
Turkish representatives make much of their country's historical role as a European frontier with Asia, including during the Cold War when it and Norway were the only NATO members to have a border with the Soviet Union. Turkey is a full member of the Council of Europe, the OECD and the WEU.
After the war of independence in 1919-22 Ataturk adopted a French republican model of the nation-state. The emphasis was on common Turkish citizenship, in an effort to transcend national, ethnic and linguistic particularism, which the Ottomans had normally handled with an authoritarian tolerance for diversity, until the Armenian disaster in the first World War. In contrast the modern state has been built on an assimilationist rather than a multicultural model.
Grappling with these issues taxes the political skills of Turkish liberals and democrats who have to contend with the powerful armed forces devoted to the Ataturk legacy of national unity when confronted by the Kurdish campaign for autonomy or separation.
This perhaps adds point to Prof Gurel's observation that the EU's decision on Turkish membership is as much about Europe's own multicultural identity and diversity as about his country's aspiration to become a member-state. To reject Turkey on civilisational or religious grounds would be to affirm Christian legacy as the determinant of European identity.
This is indeed how many Christian Democrats see the matter. The Commission worries about over-extending Europe's borders. German politicians are particularly worried in an election year that a commitment to Turkey will lose them votes and cost them a lot of money. They have yet to resolve the thorny issue of citizenship for the millions of Turkish-Germans.
The German Foreign Minister, Dr Kinkel, talks of Turkish EU membership in the "unforeseeable future". Prof Gurel insists it must be foreseeable, even if not expected other than in the long term. On this point he has the support of the Irish government.
Another visitor to Dublin this week, Norman Davies, author of the immense and authoritative survey Europe, A History, reminded his audience in UCD that the new European identity is still in the early stages of construction and that such political communities have been built as much on fear and conflict as on solidarity in the past.
He argued that the EU cannot be understood other than as a post-imperial entity, pace Roger Cole in a recent letter to this newspaper disagreeing with my expression of the same view.
But an anarchic Russia, a resurgent Islam and a competitive United States would readily provide such antagonists. Turkey hopes it will not be in this category, but insists it is time diplomatic ambiguity be brought to an end.
