England fans wearing Turkey shirts were escorted from the stadium on Saturday

England fans can get a taste of what kind of welcome to expect in the host country when the teams meet in a friendly international on 18 February - a match they are allowed to attend.

Supporters were denied access to Istanbul on Saturday for England's final qualifying match, which ended in a scoreless draw and sent the team into the tournament proper.

Nearly 50 were turned away at the airport and sent back to the UK in a joint operation between the Turkish authorities and British police specialising in combating hooligans.

'No precedent'

That expertise will be needed again to try to ensure the estimated 50,000 England fans behave at Euro 2004 in June and July next year.

Fans were banned from the game because of past clashes between English and Turkish fans. Two Leeds supporters were killed in fan violence with Galatasary supporters in May 2000.

But the Football Association (FA) told BBC News Online the travel restrictions were only for two Euro 2004 games and that tickets would be available for the Portugal game.

We have every intention of taking tickets for the England match in Portugal next February FA spokesman

The FA also elected not to take their ticket allocation for September's qualifier against Macedonia, but 500 fans managed to buy tickets on the black market for the game in Skopje despite pleas from the FA not to attend.

"We said at the time we would not be taking tickets for the matches against Turkey and Macedonia, but that we were not intending to set a precedent," an FA spokesman said.

"We have every intention of taking tickets for the England match in Portugal next February," he said.

"We always intended events off the pitch did not affect our progress in the competition. We believe this policy has helped us qualify for the finals."

Turkey are one of the 10 teams who will have to compete in "play-offs" for the last remaining places in the finals. They play against Latvia, while Scotland play the Netherlands and Wales play Russia.

A spokesman from the Welsh FA said that were Wales to have drawn Turkey in the play-off draw they would not have banned their fans from travelling but would have "encouraged" their fans not to have attended the match in Turkey.