This article examines the content of the compromise reached between Damascus and the Syrian Kurds, its implication for the regional balance – Turkey, the United-States, Israel, and the peace process with the PKK – and places it within the long-term context of the Kurdish question, comparing it to the far more institutionalised but as fragile trajectory of  Iraqi Kurdistan, whose structural vulnerability, despite thirty years of constitutional autonomy, has been highlighted by Adel Bakawan. Finally, this article considers what the end of the Rojava era might mean for the future of the Kurdish national movement as a whole.