Haidar Pasha is a suburb of Istanbul between Scutari (Uskudar) and Kadikoy on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorous. The cemetery is on high ground behind the Haida Pasha pier head and railway station. By ferry from the Golden Horn, Istanbul: Take the ferry from Karakoy, near the Galata Bridge, to Haidar Pasha pier head and railway station. Go around to the right (south) side of the main station building and follow the road east approximately 400 metres. Close to the mosque with twin minarets there are steps up to the Kadikoy Rimtimi Cad Road. Turn left (northwards) along this road (passing over the railway lines) and continue for approximately 700 metres and then at the traffic lights turn left down towards the entrance to the cemetery which is accessed by a large path to the right hand side as you face the military hospital main gate. A small chain is across the path entrance but this is just to stop vehicles from using the path for parking.

Haidar Pasha Cemetery was first established for Crimean War burials and was used during the First World War by the Turks for the burial of Commonwealth prisoners of war. After the Armistice, when Istanbul was occupied, further burials were made mainly from No. 82 General Hospital and graves were brought in from other civil cemeteries in the area. During the Second World War, Turkey retained her neutrality and those Commonwealth servicemen buried there were mainly men taken prisoner during operations in the Aegean, who died while attempting to escape from camps where they awaited transport to Germany and Italy, and whose bodies were washed up on the Turkish coast.

The war graves plot contains 407 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, 60 of them unidentified. Second World War burials number 39, 14 of them unidentified. Also within the cemetery, which the Commission maintains as a whole, are about 6,000 Crimean graves, mostly unmarked, and numerous non war military and civilian graves and memorials. Within the war graves plot stands the Haidar Pasha Cremation Memorial, which commemorates 122 soldiers of the Indian Army who died in 1919 and 1920 who were originally commemorated at Mashiak and Osmanieh Cemeteries. In 1961 when these cemeteries could no longer be maintained, the ashes of the Hindus, whose remains were cremated in accordance with their faith, were scattered near this memorial, while the remains of their comrades of the Muslim faith were brought here and re-interred.

The war graves plot also contains the Haidar Pasha Memorial, which was erected to commemorate more than 30 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War who died fighting in South Russia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, and in post Armistice operations in Russia and Transcaucasia, whose graves are not known. An Addenda panel was later added to commemorate over 170 Commonwealth casualties who are buried in cemeteries in South Russia and Transcaucasia whose graves can no longer be maintained.