Airports can be dehumanizing, and probably nothing in an airport is more dehumanizing than the security screening process.

Empty your pockets. Take off your belt, your watch, and your shoes. Put everything on a conveyor belt to be fed into the x-ray machine.

While that is happening step through this arch. It buzzed? Get patted down, have a wand waved over you or have a full body scan with a different machine. You must be concealing something, don’t look so innocent.

Stand here please. Place your feet on the yellow footprints and hold your hands up like this.

When extremists started hijacking planes in the 1970s it was obvious that security measures would have to be taken. I understand that. But there should be some common sense limits so that the security process doesn’t become too obtrusive. Or should I say too ridiculous.

Some common standards would be nice too. I know in theory what you can and can’t take on a plane is carved in some sort of international stone. In practice there seems to be a fair amount of flexibility. That may be why I seem to be subjected to even more security screening when I am in transit. I may have been screened at my point of embarkation, been in the custody of the airline for the duration of my flight, but I still have to be screened before I can enter the airport terminal to connect for my next flight. Such is the case at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport.

I suppose I can put up with that without complaining, but last week there was another security wrinkle.

After an early morning flight (we had to be at the airport for 1 a.m.) to Istanbul, and through the security to be admitted to the terminal, we had a six hour late before the call for boarding for the flight home. The various duty-free shops at Ataturk Airport sell a variety of over-priced goods, but nothing that would be considered dangerous.

So imagine my surprise to arrive at the gate for boarding and discover that once again there was a security check. Not just checking passports to ensure that the people boarding the plane were on the passenger manifest, they were searching everyone’s carry-on luggage. The same luggage that was x-rayed and checked before people entered the terminal.

Security measures are important. And maybe there was a good reason for the extra check. But…

Deciding to do that extra screening delayed boarding. By an hour. Which meant the flight was delayed by an hour. Okay, anything in the name of safety. Except….

When it became obvious the screening was going to delay the plane even more they stopped checking people’s bags. Explain to me how that is safe? What if some someone with some nefarious intent was in the second half of the lineup? Seems to me like I was delayed by some sloppy work for no real purpose.

Then I realized what the whole procedure was for. It isn’t about security at all. The whole idea is a make-work project to provide jobs for people who otherwise wouldn’t have had them. Extra security keeps the unemployment rate down.

Somehow that doesn’t make me feel safer.