You know, it's not often I find myself in support of attempted military coups but I found myself hoping for a successful overthrow on Friday July 15th, only to be disappointed as I woke up the next morning. What happened on Friday night in Turkey happened incredibly quickly and almost out of nowhere, and has confused quite a few people as to why it may have happened and what this potentially means moving forward. So if you're one of those people who likes to be opinionated on events that have no bearing in your personal life, here are four things you should know before taking sides.

1. Turkey has a history of military coups

Typically military intervention in political affairs is a big deal for any nation, but for Turkey it seems like its a pretty common occurrence. As of now, this is the fourth coup the Turkish military has staged since the sixties with each of them being more successful than the one that took place last night.

The common factor in all being the deposing of a president that became too autocratic followed by the reinstatement of a democratic system. While that may sound insane at first to some people, Turkeys checks and balances system actually allows the army to step in when it feels the constitution is at risk.

The Turkish army seems to have mainly secular motives, which is a bit worrying that they failed because it now opens the door for further consolidation of power by President Erdogan, who isn't the greatest guy in the world. Now I know what some of you might be thinking, Erdogan was democratically elected and is well liked by his people, surely this coup was an act of treason. Well...

2. He's openly anti-democratic

Under Erdogan, Turkey is a democratic country in name only. The three major litmus tests for democracy are the society's treatment of women, the society's treatment of minorities, and how they handle freedom of speech and the press.

Turkey does poorly in all three areas, which brings us into the religious autocracy/oligarchy area of the spectrum of ruler-ship. It seems that when Erdogan isn't massacring the Kurds among many other human rights violations, he's throwing journalists in jail over criticisms.

Yes, disagreeing and/or criticizing the president is actually illegal in Turkey; just ask the journalists who are being tried and jailed as terrorists, for daring to criticize the government. And if that wasn't enough he also destroyed the caste that was the military, which if you remember was the branch of government that protected democracy.

Given the failure of the military last night, you can be damn sure that Erdogan will use this as an excuse to further consolidate power, much like Hitler did when the Reichstag burnt. We may have just seen the last hope for Secularism die in Turkey Friday, just let that sink in.

3. He's turned a blind eye to Isis

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" holds incredibly true in Turkeys situation. While he may not be supporting Isis in the way of weapons and training Erdogan certainly doesn't seem to mind buying oil from them. Nor does he have a problem with allowing their supply lines to openly run through Turkey. And to make everything worse Turkey is in line for EU membership, meaning terrorists or otherwise general trouble makers will have no problem moving through the rest of Europe, only making the current situation that much worse.

4. The coup may have been staged

Put on your tinfoil hats because this is where it gets weird. If you were one of those people paying attention as everything went down on Friday night you may have noticed the coup attempt was sloppily executed and without much popular support.

For example, why would you stage a coup when your leader is out of the country on vacation? Not to mention the fact the military forces involved got overwhelmed by civilians and police forces who were called to the streets by Erdogan via face time.

The most interesting piece of evidence for this is that captured soldiers told interrogators that they believed they were taking part in a military exercise. They only seem to have realized what was happening when civilians started getting on the tanks.

The attempt itself could have easily come from the colonel leading the attempt, however we still don't know the motive behind the attempt. For all we know Erdogan could have arranged something with the colonel to have an excuse to purge the military of opposition, which he was already planning on doing months before and has done in the past.

This is an incredibly messy situation that is still in development, but as far as I know Erdogan needs to be Erdogone if we still want to be allies with Turkey. We've already lost any hope of Turkey staying a secular country, and this could very easily escalate into World War III as this unfolds.