In September 2017, Ayse Böhürler, a well-known pious intellectual and founding member of the AKP, published a much-noticed opinion piece for the Turkish daily Yeni Safak. With the headline “A youth tired of religion,” Böhürler sought to attract her readership’s attention to what she perceived as the failure of Turkish conservatives to address and respond to the younger generation’s social, psychological, and religious needs. This indifference, in the view of Böhürler, has resulted in a growing sense of estrangement of young people from conservative families from religion. Böhürler’s observations coincide with the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs’ apparent concerns over the dissemination of deist, nihilist, and atheist thought in Turkey. In a recently published special issue of the Directorate’s official monthly magazine, the editors invited various authors to address and explain the imminent threat of unbelief spreading in Turkish society. In the light of the enhanced visibility of religious symbolism and religiosity in the public sphere and the revival of religious references in political rhetoric, concerns over the spread of atheism and unbelief might appear surprising, especially as the phenomenon yet still lacks sufficient academic evidence. Based on a set of biographical interviews conducted with Turkish atheists in autumn 2017, this paper sets out to analyze and compare individual stories of leaving Islam in Turkey. Becoming atheist is a controversial issue, especially when situated in a pious, conservative environment. The process of leaving Islam often takes place secretly, either for the sake of not hurting the feelings of family members and loved ones or the fear of coming into open conflict with one’s direct social environment (family, work, peer group). Public confessions of atheism, as voiced by several interviewees, are usually perceived even worse than ‘coming out of the closet.’ By way of learning more about how individuals came to lose religion and how they experienced the process of becoming atheist in relation to their particular social environment, this paper seeks to reveal another layer in the present discourse on atheism in Turkey.