The administration may cause various damages to people while performing the public services it is obliged to fulfill. As a requirement of the principle of the rule of law, the administration has to compensate for the damages it has caused to the people with its acts and actions. In Turkish law, the liabilty of the administration is mainly explained by the service defect theory. The service defect, which has different characteristics from the concept of defect in private law, can be expressed as the deficiencies that occur in the public services in general. The liability of the administration arises when the service defect in the acts and actions of the administration coexists with the link of loss and causality. In Turkish law, only the administration is responsible for the damages arising from the service defect; public personnel are not responsible for damage caused by service defects. However, if the damage stems from the officer’s personal fault rather than the service defect, the doctrine and judicial decisions have in some cases put forward the view that only civil servants have an obligation to compensate. At this point, it is necessary to draw the characteristics and limits of the service defect and personal defect well; because the type of defect has many different legal consequences. Doctrines and judicial decisions occasionally present contradictory views in order to clarify this differences.